
Class E. \ G S 

Book . ^19" 

GopightN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The United States 



An Account of Past and contemporary 
Conditions and Progress 



Edited and Arranged by 

JOHN M. HALL 



Published by the 

BAY VIEW READING CLUB 

CENTRAL OFFICE. BOSTON BOULEVARD 

DETROIT, MICH. 

1907 



iUBRARY of OONi^f'fe.SS 
Two Copies Kece!-.?-' 






Copyrighted, 1907, 

BY 

JOHN M. HALL 




CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

Earliest Colonial History and Life 7 

CHAPTER n 
Life and Customs in the Quaker and Puritan Colo- 
nies 21 

CHAPTER HI 
Expansion of the United States Zl 

CHAPTER IV 
Changes of a Quarter Century 51 

CHAPTER V 
America's Colonial Policy 65 

CHAPTER VI 
Rise of Political Parties and Force of Public Opinion 74 

CHAPTER VII 
Past and Future of the United States Supreme Court 85 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Immigration Question 95 

CHAPTER IX 
What Uncle Sam Is Doing — Forestry Preserving 110 

CHAPTER X 
What Uncle Sam Is Doing — The New Agriculture.. 122 

CHAPTER XI 
What Uncle Sam Is Doing — Road Building 136 

CHAPTER Xll 
Is Public Ownership a Fallacy ? 147 

CHAPTER XIII 
American Women 161 

CHAPTER XIV 
Women's Clubs and Their Work 175 

CHAPTER XV 
Journalism in America 186 

CHAPTER XVI 
The American Pulpit 198 



PREFACE 

THE student of some lands anticipates no particu- 
lar charm in their contemporary history and life, 
and, therefore, he fastens upon the long past as the 
time which offers the greatest instruction and pleas- 
ure. This is true of Spain and Greece, whose "dead 
past" is even more vital with power than the living 
present. They influence the world more by what they 
have done than by what they are now doing. 

There are other lands, hoary with age, whose early 
history has scarcely a page to arouse enthusiasm, but 
whose modern day is their brightest and best. 
Witness a notable illustration in Japan, whose emer- 
gence into the modern world and whose marvelous 
strides are all within the memory of living men and 
women of seventy years. 

There is still another class, whose beginning and 
their present equally move us by their wonderful rec- 
ord. In this class our own country is the most con- 
spicuous example in all the world to-day. It is like 
an oak in its prime, — still sound at the root^ strong 
in body, and beautiful in its spreading green top. 
Such a land has had a golden age in every decade; 
sometimes in the matchless Plymouth and other colony 
days, or in the Revolution, or the Civil War, or in 
the splendors of to-day. This little book traces some 



6 PREFACE 

of the characteristics of the last golden age^ in many 
respects the most wonderful of all the decades of 
American history and effort. 

In preparing a course of study on our own coun- 
try for the members of the Bay View Reading Clubs 
and for the "solitaire" students, it was felt that it 
would have a serious defect if a study of contempo- 
rary life and times was omitted. And yet, so far as 
known, there is not a single book on the subject. 
This contemporary life of ours is not one broad, deep 
current, but a stream of many currents, each one of 
which has been especially studied by solitary investi- 
gators. No one mind could authoritatively enlighten 
others on all its activities, but it was realized that 
another^ with a comprehensive and orderly plan, could 
weave the work of others into a rich and useful 
fabric. And this is what has been done in this book. 
While the plan has its disadvantages, on the other 
hand it gives a work each of whose chapters is the 
contribution of a specialist. Acknowledgment is made 
of the generous consent of publishers to use the ma- 
terial, and at the end of each chapter is a key-letter 
which directs the reader to the last page of the book 
for the authorship and source of the chapter. License 
has been taken to correct some parts with the latest 
statistics and information ; also to eliminate unimpor- 
tant material in the interest of limitation of space ; 
and to do some slight editing in order to unite all the 
work in a smooth fabric. J. M. Hall. 



THE UNITED STATES 



CHAPTER I 

EARLIEST COLONIAL HISTORY AND LIFE 

A PROPER way to reach a comprehension of our 
progress and contemporary Hfe is to go back 
over the road by which we have come, and view the 
conditions that once existed. Only as we project the 
picture of the present on the background of the past 
can we appreciate our wonderful progress. My pri- 
mary object is to sketch life and customs, but these 
so often rest in history that I must recall some of the 
story of the colonial narrative. 

It was eighty years after the discoveries by the 
Cabots before Englishmen made any serious effort 
to establish homes in North America. And these 
efforts made successively, with Jamestown as a 
nucleus, could hardly be called serious, since the 
promoters had not so much in mind colonization as 
they had commercial motives. They sought a South 
Sea passage to the Indies ; they coveted gold and sil- 
ver mines such as those with which Mexico was en- 
riching the coffers of Spain ; they looked for a climate 
favorable for the manufacture of wine ; their rage for 
silk they would satisfy by cultivating the silkworm in 



8 THE UNITED STATES 

Virginia. All these things they would force from a 
handful of miserable men, poorly housed under roofs 
of bark and weed, surrounded by savage foes^ and 
dying of starvation and fever in the malarial bogs of 
the James River. 

Twenty years after Raleigh's failures, the Vir- 
ginia Company was chartered under the laws of Eng- 
land, and in 1607 the first ship-load of emigrants 
landed at Jamestown. The orders were that the emi- 
grants, who were men without families, should live 
in community style, for five years the produce going 
into a common fund. Individual interests were thus 
merged in that of the commercial company to which 
Virginia had been granted^ and indolence and quar- 
reling resulted among the colonists. Failure of crops, 
or their destruction by the Indians, brought in its 
wake dire suffering, and added to this was the dan- 
ger of death by the Indian tomahawk or arrow, and 
the burning of their houses over their heads. 

George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northum- 
berland, writing of the hardships of the times, said: 
"There never were Englishmen left in any foreign 
country in such misery as we were in this new-dis- 
covered Virginia." A pint of worm-eaten barley or 
wheat was allowed for a day's ration. This was made 
into pottage and served out at the rate of one small 
ladleful at each meal. "Our drink was water, our 
lodgings castles in the air/' says Captain John Smith. 
"If there were any conscience in men," further adds 
Percy, "it would make their hearts bleed to hear the 



THE UxNITED STATES 9 

pitiful murmur ings and outcries of our sick men, 
without relief every day and night for the space of 
about six weeks." Half of the colonists died, and 
those who lived were saved by the Indians who 
brought game, grain, and fruit in exchange for trin- 
kets possessed by the English. 

The legend of Captain John Smith and Pocahon- 
tas has proved to be only the fabrication of Smith's 
imaginative mind, suggested to him after Pocahontas 
married Rolfe and appeared in London as a foreign 
princess. Edward Eggleston, who wrote voluminously 
of the Virginia colonists, says of Captain Smith, that 
"his paradoxical character has been much misunder- 
stood. Those who discredit the historical accuracy 
of his narratives, consider his deeds of no value. On 
the other hand, those who appreciate Smith's serv- 
ices to the colony in its dire extremities, believe that 
the historical authority of such a man must be valid. 
But it does not matter greatly," the author adds, 
"whether the * strangely grimmed and disguised ' 
Indians seen by Smith at one place on the Potomac, 
who, according to the story, were shouting and yell- 
ing horribly, though in ambuscade, numbered three 
or four hundred, as in one account, or three or four 
thousand^ as in his -later story. To Captain Smith 
remains the credit of having been the one man in 
these first years — the man who wasted no time in a 
search for gold, but won from the Indians what was 
of infinitely greater value, — the corn needed to pre- 
serve the lives of the colonists. In mental and phys- 



10 THE UNITED STATES 

ical hardihood, and in what may be called shiftiness, 
as well as in proneness to exaggeration and in boast- 
fulness^ he was in some sense a typical American pio- 
neer — a forerunner of the daring and ready-witted 
men who have subdued a savage continent." 

There were perilous times for the Virginia colony 
after the banishment to England of Captain John 
Smith by his enemies, Archer and Ratclifife. The 
crops failed, and the colonists resorted to the eating 
of horses, rats^ mice, adders, and even dead Indians, 
it is recorded. Finally Daniel Tucker — the ''Old Dan 
Tucker," afterward the tyrant of the Bermudas — be- 
thought himself to build a boat for fishing purposes. 
'This," says Percy, "did keep us from killing one 
another to eat." But it is related that one man was 
driven to cannibalism by hunger and slew his wife. 
What he could not eat of her he salted. For his 
fiendish act he was burned to the stake. 

Time after time was the little colony almost de- 
populated, but was kept together by De la Warr, the 
cruel Sir Thomas Dale, and the unscrupulous Cap- 
tain Argall, until 1618, when, on the eighteenth of 
November, the Virginia Company, acting within the 
powers conferred upon it by its charter, granted the 
residents of Virginia a document styled a "Great 
Charter or Commissions of Privileges, Orders, and 
Lawes." No copy of this instrument was preserved, 
but some of its provisions are still extant. It estab- 
lished a legislative body, to consist of councilors of 
estate and representatives or burgesses chosen by the 



THE UNITED STATES 11 

several ''plantations" or hundreds, and it limited the 
power of the governor. "This charter," says Eggles- 
ton, "was the starting-point of constitutional govern- 
ment in the New World. It contained in embryo the 
American system of an executive power lodged mainly 
in one person^ and a legislature of two houses. One 
might without much exaggeration call this paper a 
sort of Magna Charta of America, and it was a long 
and probably a deliberate step toward popular gov- 
ernment. If the results that have followed it be con- 
sidered, it can hardly be accounted second in impor- 
tance to any other state paper of the seventeenth cen- 
tury." 

It was in this same year, but before the charter 
was granted, that the colonists expressed their needs 
in this quaint phrase : "A plantation can never flour- 
ish till families be planted and the respects of Wives 
and Children fix the people on the soyle." In re- 
sponse to this sentiment, England sent over a ship 
freighted with home-makers, in which were ninety 
maidens. Mary Johnson uses this episode as a basis 
for one of her most charming novels, "To Have and 
to Hold." The colonists had to defray the expense 
of the transportation of this cargo in the high-priced 
tobacco of the time. The planter had to pay for his 
wife, and even then could not have her without her 
consent, and so the monotony of existence was varied 
with energetic courting scenes. For thirteen years 
this custom of sending over wives continued. In 
1732 two young women were sent back to England 



12 THE UNITED STATES 

because of scandalous conduct on the voyage across. 
They were told that only good^ pure women were fit 
to become the mothers of Virginians. 

''When there were house-mothers in the cabins, 
and children born in the country," says Eggleston, 
"the settlers no longer dreamed of returning to Eng- 
land ; and there w^as soon a young generation that 
knew no other skies than those that spanned the 
rivers, fields, and vast primeval forests of their na- 
tive Virginia, which now for the first time became a 
home." 

Prosperous times followed for the Virginians. 
The profits from the sale of tobacco were large, and 
they lived in that riotous profusion that sometimes 
characterizes men emerging from the hardships and 
perils of pioneer times into unstinted wealth. The 
gambling spirit was upon them, and gold changed 
hands faster than it could be counted, and every gen- 
tleman, winner or loser, arose from the table at dawn, 
his smile and his courtesy as undimmed as the sparkle 
on the freshly opened champagne. Even the clergy 
participated in the reckless life of the people. The 
most inefiicient clergymen were the ones who could 
be most easily persuaded to leave England and ac- 
cept the hardships of the wilderness. In some in- 
stances men who had been deposed by the Church in 
England found livings in Virginia. These men, as 
a class, not only lacked zeal and spirituality, but many 
of them were addicted to open vice. Horse-racing, 
gambling, and drunken revels were among their sins. 



THE UNITED STATES 13 

It is recorded that one of them was president of a 
jockey club for many years. They encouraged among 
the people the custom of celebrating the sacrament 
of baptism with festivities and dancing, in which the 
clergy took part. One clergyman is said to have 
called out to his church warden during communion, 
''Here, George, this bread is not fit for a dog to eat ! " 
Another fought a duel in a graveyard; and still an- 
other thrashed his vestry and the next Sunday 
preached from the text : "And I contended with them, 
and cursed them, and smote certain of them and 
plucked off their hair." A writer on this subject 
says that no doubt the vestry got what was coming 
to them, as the vestry in those days exercised too 
much authority. 

For all this and much more a slur has ever 
been cast on Virginians. And yet it has been well 
said by Sydney George Fisher that *'the common- 
wealth which could produce Washington, Jefferson, 
Henry, Madison, Marshall, Monroe, the Lees, the 
Randolphs, the Carters, the Harrisons, and a host 
of other eminent men, which was called the Mother 
of Presidents, and which exercised such a control- 
ling influence in the Revolution and the formation 
of the Constitution, must have been a remarkable 
community ; for such distinguished men are the re- 
sult of conditions in which they live, and can not 
spring up by accident or of their own will." 

During the spring and summer months of the 
present year (1907) many visitors to the Jamestown 



14 THE UNITED STATES 

Exposition made their way up the path toward the 
rustic entrance to the tree-shaded enclosure within 
which is a broken, soHtary and ivy-mantled church 
tower, half hidden by its grove of sheltering trees. 
As they stood beside the almost obliterated remains 
of the colonial powder magazine, they looked about 
to find nothing remaining save the ivy-covered tower 
of the old church and the crumbling gravestones. 
The grass-grown remainder of the mightiest of mod- 
ern wars is heaped up over what were the streets 
and highways of the old village. The unstayed river, 
relentless as time itself, has foot by foot eaten away 
the actual site of much of old Jamestown, where 
Smith and De la Warr labored, where Pocahontas 
lived and flourished, where Berkeley ruled with des- 
potic sway, and where Bacon, backing his words with 
his deeds, made the first successful armed protest 
against kingly tyranny in the name of the people. 

And yet, here was once the most prosperous and 
important town in the colonies. In spite of jealousy, 
neglect, and privation, the colony planted on this is- 
land (then a peninsula), in 1607, flourished and grew, 
until its one hundred and fifty colonists increased to 
fifteen thousand in 1647^ and the palisaded village 
of fifty houses, as it was in Pocahontas' time, grew 
into the colonial metropolis of Berkeley's day, with 
its capitol and its court-house and its governor's 
mansion^ its taverns and shops and traders, its streets 
and highways and ocean piers, now all vanished ut- 
terly, save the old tower and the walls of the thrice- 



THE UNITED STATES 15 

burnt house in the fields, known as the Carey place. 
There once lived Washington's earliest love, and there, 
too, it is also claimed, stood Governor Berkeley's 
mansion in the days of his stormy supremacy. As 
one looks across the ever-widening creek, where once 
stretched a neck of land, one can imagine a strange 
procession: John Smith and his soldiers marching 
into the wilderness ; Pocahontas bearing relief or 
warning to the colonists ; and Bacon and his patriots 
entering the captured capital. Explorer and colo- 
nist, trader and priest, governor and councilor, 
landed proprietor and negro slave, sailors, soldiers, 
Indian ally or red-skinned foeman, stately ladies on 
horseback or in lumbering coaches, bondmaid and 
goodwife — all the life and all the display were seen 
in old Jamestown, as the seat of colonial government 
for over ninety years, until Governor Nicholson, in 
1698, removed the capital to Williamsburg and took 
from Jamestown all its prestige and power. 

Soon after the establishment of the colony at 
Jamestown the Dutch under the leadership of Hud- 
son settled the country known for years as New 
Netherlands, afterward New York State. During 
the first forty years of its existence the great city 
which we now call New York was a Dutch settlement 
known as New Amsterdam. The Dutch had no 
political or colonizing propensities, and established 
themselves at first for the mere purpose of collecting 
furs from the Indians. New Amsterdam was well 
located for the Dutch traders, being near Long Is- 



16 THE UNITED STATES 

land, the mint of the Indians, where wampum was 
manufactured out of shells. The Dutch could pur- 
chase the wampum cheap and use it to buy furs from 
the northern tribes. 

None of the nations that sought homes in the 
New World were as cruel to the Indians as were the 
Dutch. At one time when Kieft was governor of the 
colony, a company of eighty men fell upon the un- 
suspecting Indians at Pavona and murdered men, 
women, and children in cold blood. From midnight 
until morning they shot and slashed, threw children 
into the water and drove mothers in after them, while 
the screams were heard across the bay at Fort Am- 
sterdam, Shortly afterward another party of Indians 
was surprised and forty of them killed. The sol- 
diers returned to Kieft in the morning with the heads 
and prisoners, and he welcomed them by shaking 
their bloody hands. The women of the colony, too, 
became aroused to brutality, and, in imitation of the 
savages, heaped indignities upon the dripping heads. 
Not content with this slaughter, the Dutchmen made 
a raid on the Long Island Indians who had always 
been their friends, and robbed them of their corn. 
Within a few months the Indians commenced to 
square accounts with the Dutch. Hiding in the 
swamps and thickets, they began their stealthy, sav- 
age tactics against which the Dutchmen were pow- 
erless. The farmer and his cattle were shot down, 
grain and hay crops were set on fire, and the women 
and children whose lives were spared were taken into 



THE UNITED STATES 17 

captivity. In his extremity Kieft sent to the Puri- 
tans for aid, but received the answer that the Eng- 
Hsh beHeved the Indians were justified in their war- 
fare. Sydney George Fisher says it is not unHkely 
that many a Puritan prayed to his terrible God not 
to deUver the Swanennekens (the name the Indians 
gave the Dutch) from the hand of the heathen, but 
to sweep them off the continent that the saints might 
inherit the earth. The war continued five years, only 
ending when the remnant of the Dutch joined forces 
with the Puritans. 

The Dutch were skilful gardeners, and in New 
Amsterdam they soon had beautiful gardens surround- 
ing their houses, both of vegetables and flowers. 
Many of them were imported from Holland, but be- 
side these they brought into cultivation many of the 
native wild flowers. They also had flocks of geese, 
ducks, and chickens. The Dutch vrouws and their 
goodmen slept on beds filled with feathers plucked 
from their own geese, and for covering put over 
themselves another feather bed. They had quanti- 
ties of clothes, and seem to have thought the climate 
cold, for the women are pictured as wearing innu- 
merable petticoats and the men several pairs of trou- 
sers, one over the other; and in church in winter the 
men used muffs. 

They had linen in great quantity, both for wear 
and for the bed and table. Some families had five or 
six hundred dollars worth ; and it is recordea that one 
man had eighty muslin sheets^ twenty-three linen 



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^ve&b'>lh^thsdirmsi Q^Jly^rra^cdafiyb^ggS Imhgatgii^oftl 

step :3asd"7e(r€Svejr?9i3itm^/igwssi^lig .^hste sbftfe igc^dii-t 
fif^noBrhoke4 Hc^i/Pptd:^ Bydue^^rrS-ecQi^ rtFfMie?,ntfell& 
us that their love of gossip, combiimd^M^fJtS th^Jr i^to 
sMV^ness j . kept ^tfeesjkri^sito's^s with vsurh3j(^ dslScier . 
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tecati'S^ ^e'> saidi-tlm^vhisowiBg^clAflfffitefJ lif^H |?ai 
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ba^lojjlq 2i3fi:tfi93: rUiv/ bsllii gbsd no iqsia namboo;^^ 
•13Y0 toitN^^i^^g'^Qtpn^ ^"?3^^ Mo ihdi moil 
.Makes me; other than 1 am. , , , 

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slBmib sife) Jd[^J(hi^^d:^^'^iU'eJdnyiaf. ^^ ^asrl+ob io ■^5h 
-unn't ■gnhc'^Yi ^£ bstnlDiq 3"i£ narnow sriJ lolt ^bloo 
-noWlte Butohi£-faTeaer®rrli^ii Hins bi5Qoi$ldqdl$Fd^rh 
hiiiisEsr^niwitibi sbTalHowiiiidjoiKs; -fflrSoAgd^ -itogercelteie^ 
where they stored great supplies ofe¥k£@efe^es nto 
Td3fi^niiisQ*.\aaad';h-0gsbfadEsiiJ;§ saltadnbefe^rlp^DHXand 
fislz; 'hlih&y aGQokdd ?«did2 theldkfcfibjKds^dwHiclaohterje 
kKg6.-ind fextendei jfabrnin,tdtTliii0 aiBifnb bKitorfeayg 



kasMkiothelJE^cthv'WEc&mDtraislihea.vyi c|rlnkew$ ::«tsi l^^r 
Ikigljsfc.rbnti whgnr;jwfe |-ead: abotit whit thd^:d€]aiilt9 
^fifijate'^lx^MQirideri vWhat:G<Dicild lia^e been th& baipae^ 
itjfnoi te ■^gHsfe.^b AtriQng:2y3)e:jitemsLilifelM^vft®s(a«d[ 
Btitehj cfHjididate.rf Qr L ele<ctiQii were sixty-two - gallotrst 
of rum, several gallons of brandy, a pyd of^wineiy be^t 
sides lime juice, shrub, mugs, jugs, and bottles. Alice 
Morse Earle tells us that Dutch workmen on a build- 
ing had to be "sustained" at every stage. In 1606 
those who pulled down an old building in Albany, she 
says, received a ''tun of strong beer." When the 
first stones of the new wall were laid, the masons 
were given a case of brandy and thirty-two gallons 
of other liquor. When the beams were carried in 
by eight men, they were given half a barrel of beer 
for every beam ; and when the beams were laid, two 
barrels of strong beer, three cases of brandy, and 
seventy-two florins' worth of small beer. In the 
light of these facts we can understand Rip Van 
Winkle's toast, "Here's to you and your wife and 
your children, and may you all live long and pros- 
per." 

Notwithstanding the queerness of the Dutch colo- 
nists, they have added many valuable characteristics 
to the concrete American character, and from them 
has descended the time-honored Knickerbocker aris- 
tocracy of old Gotham. The names of Schuyler, 
Cuyler, Stuyvesant, Van Rensselaer, Van Twiller, 
Van der Voort, we still have with us, and they are 
names to conjure with. The greatest financiers of 



20 THE UNITED STATES 

the present day trace their ancestry directly to these 
old Dutch traders. And more than all else, the chief 
executive of the nation to-day, who holds, more than 
has any of his predecessors, the destiny of the coun- 
try in his hands, has Dutch blood a plenty a-coursing 
through his veins.^ 



CHAPTER II 

LIFE AND CUSTOMS IN THE PURITAN AND QUAKER 
COLONIES 

TWENTY-THREE years after the landing of the 
Pilgrims the population of New England had 
grown to twenty-four thousand. Forty-nine little 
wooden towns^ with their wooden churches, wooden 
forts, and wooden ramparts, were dotted here and 
there over the land. There were four separate colo- 
nies. They were Plymouth^ Massachusetts, Connect- 
icut, and New Haven. There appeared at first a 
disposition in the Pilgrim mind to scatter widely, and 
remain apart in small self-governing communities. 
For some years every little band which pushed 
deeper and deeper into the wilderness, settled itself 
into an independent state, having no political rela- 
tions with its neighbors. But this isolation could not 
continue. The wilderness had other inhabitants whose 
presence was a standing menace. Within striking 
distance there were Indians enough to trample out the 
solitary little English communities. On their fron- 
tier were Frenchmen and Dutchmen — natural ene- 
mies, as all men in that time were to each other. 
For mutual defense and encouragement the four 
colonies joined themselves into the United Colonies 
of New England. This was the first confederation 
in a land where confederations of unprecedented 
magnitude were hereafter to be established. 

21 



22 THE UNITED STATES 

In every way New^EnHand was a direct contrast 
to the Virginia colony; ^ "Instead* of landing on the 
cQt^MW9|} mth^ MaLlmjimonth ot May, bleak. Decem- 
ber marked the advei^f W^^fiii Pilgrims. Instead of 
the mild climate pf the Chesapeal^e Bay,.;wy:eiiave.JtJie 
rugged^ rock-bouad .coast, barren lar^d, fir. trees, a|id 
rigorous Climate. Even the colonists themselves dif- 
fered greatly from the virginjans. Instead of being 
adherents to tbe Church of Englai;id and pjeasure- 
loying people, they' were 'stiilf, solemn, individuals, de- 
voted to schools, colle£:es, , and learning. Amusement 
was ^ crime to them ; ^tjbeir live^j were^ 
^akeri'up.Vitfi' reli'^ion„ and, wtiile tliey, carne to. Amer- 




to ^rant it. to omers, ana, were tne 

hon^Lsn fBi:iw bqzd sthi yiDvo ^1^.s(^ 
Janatids the world has ever known. 



In, tne Dcgmning .there were two 'distinct colonies 

-.£lt.q^j-:. . . on •gtny£d ,^-i£iz 3 ric^^ q- A) n i ri£ c^m 
in Massachusetts.. J:^irst came thQ Plymouth colony^ 
Ion bi:.j3 irH--''ri^ 2'i"^ J^i .oioan- ;:.a ^1l mr// gnofr 
known as tne , Pilgr jm ,P athers, and tea^years .later 
92orb/VL£jni3Jmj3nn,: TDnjri bj^fi ^^'^[n^bb■^^iYi'' j^ipnaoo 
the ,. Massachusetts Bay colony. Ihe Plymouth 

CQlohv,^ caltecl Independents,' were dissenters, and had 

5fli j:;o clqin£-:j ci n^i:Q.L^o an^iDiiL s^ov/ S'l^^n: io:i^:aiD 
sepa,rated , theniselves f rom the ,Chur£.h of.. England. 
-n^-Ti ii3rij np ^^^J^^r^.TI^^fo^ na-%3 silU y-^:ito?i 
1 here were about one hundred of them. .-, 1 hey were 

wretcnenly poor m iingland, . and rehgiojus persecu- 

tion drpve them to embark for the. New World on 

"lijoi. Of-.; jfrorrrs^ir--' ^ .. :-7 sanotMb I'oiJijra 10I 
the ipimortal ship, the "j\Iavfiower.: .They were jn- 
83rnoijo_; bj^inJ"^- ' jcrasnl b^:r::a[ £3i:iQiOD 

dustrioiis. and thrifty, and made excellent soloieirs. 
aQilBivb'juioo r-id an/ piy/< arii .--i.fl;, r ../.■: /^ 10 
They, were disciplined .and, drilled by Miles Standish, 

D3:laBn33t»iq'IfJ ID gnoi j£'r)i;'JirrG-; 3i..::w DflGi £ m 

and their , village is described. as being more Uke an 
armed 9amp than a colony. Isaac De Rasiers, a 



-.£ 



''Upon the hill they have"j?^?4T|^ s|^M^^?ioM? 




b\^ b^at Qi drimi, ,each with his musket or iirelock, in 

mi ^ piae^ thfenlSfelly^nffloofidiefV A-ee' ^^®^)^,3 a«^ togj 
ledi-^rB;sp^g^i>^o-w>it^j0,ift (t^§|rI©t,rfkim4j£rP§|jin^ 
comes, the g^overnor. in a lone robe ;^besi4e him onrthe^ 
right nana comes me preacher with his cloak on, and 
0Ti--'¥l$e3l^fY kgfidi^M3^apMi4l2^^f^^^lii-^Ilgt46^ k^m^ ^A^ 
clo# ^^, M§ls-? §?8^}1 mm .Wfi^krjliai^i^ a;iyd j^n^lm^ 
march in good order, and each sets^his arrns down 
5f tiifif '^' ^^^ .DnEl'glki v/3^^ to zioiB, 



nea 



mi-miiS; 3d:r isvo ^loot ^srit nsdv/ ,IQdI m hnsauodJ 
The Plymouth colony had to be thus careful, \XK 

its defense Qn accovuit of .its small . numbers ana its 

dangers ironi the liidians. Sydney George f^ isher 

grapiiicalry d^escnbes trieif isolation ~^ wen lie' says . 

a^'^5f-^t I'FM^Anf^t^i^ift^ ^i^h^^ffiiS^M? att^Sgfei 
Cl^le^^^ '^ Vft-^fiflatf^^f^ib^^ogfelpftiisrkt bMi ^oytbatis 
janM^^Z-^oAi tai^-^^iOfefe-^lal^riTTh^n^^an^ isn^iiw 
t6i-'§^fe4'i5u|2§{fti ^tupy/^lie kroan^ino'EbepIkiad di^ 
iteKittfitnidcM^itogBlheaBiimfjQieiD ^^adfe^rwkitt it$9^©f^ 
<mrAhfenhiM;r:aitiH¥rive-^D5Hf^m@icf3i<|fitrij^^ 
Dutch and English vessels that visited .rj^^i/l^ft^Jl 



24 THE UNITED STATES 

Their garden patches were kept close to the village, 
and it was with great caution that they began to oc- 
cupy outlying districts." 

They numbered only two hundred and fifty at 
the end of ten years. At the end of seventy years 
there were only nine thousand of them, and they were 
absorbed by the Massachusetts Bay colony, composed 
of the Puritans. It has been said that the dramatic in- 
cident of their landing on Plymouth Rock has been 
used to exaggerate their importance in the founding 
of the nation, and that to them every good thing that 
has happened has been ascribed. As a matter of fact, 
they could hardly establish themselves, and were over- 
whelmed by the Puritans, who were really the cre- 
ators of New England, and who numbered thirty 
thousand in 1691, when they took over the Pilgrim 
Fathers. 

With the Puritans^ their religion held first place. 
It dominated every act of their lives, and they made 
it one with the affairs of state. No one could become 
a freeman and have the privilege of voting unless he 
were a church member. The examination into the 
religious experiences of a candidate was very severe, 
and it is said that not more than one out of five men 
was a freeman. This disfranchised four-fifths of 
the male colonists, and it was this class that finally 
proved the undoing of Puritan principles, influenced 
by such leavening spirits as Roger Williams and Ann 
Hutchinson. 



THE UNITED STATES 25 

There was a great difference between the minis- 
ters of the Virginia colony and the ministers of New 
England. If a Puritan suspected his minister of un- 
soundness, a list of written questions was presented 
to him and answers demanded. He dare not refuse. 
This system filled the pulpits with able men, for a 
weak one could not meet their arguments. 

Perhaps the history of no people presents so many 
atrocities committed in the name of religion as does 
that of the Puritans. The limit was reached in the 
persecution of the Quakers and the hangings for 
witchcraft. During the witchcraft madness no one 
was safe. The least peculiarity in manner, a chance 
remark that could be given a double meaning, was 
often enough to convict a person. The killing con- 
tinued from the first of June to the first of Sep- 
tember, 1692, when the end came because they began 
to strike at prominent persons, the governor's wife 
being accused of being a witch. Cotton Mather, the 
maddest of all mad Puritans and the leader in the 
witchcraft craze, never regained the respect of the 
colonists. 

The persecutions of the Quakers were even more 
cruel than the punishments inflicted on the alleged 
witches. Many of them were hanged, some had their 
ears cut off, some their tongues pierced by a red-hot 
iron, and others were stripped to the waist and 
whipped. It is no wonder that an Indian, to whose 
wigwam a banished Quaker fled for protection, ex- 
claimed, "What a God have the English ! " Notwith- 



'WhiitieT3:)\s/asria destetdsqdiiDfriJOiiiEfjaf jtli^e ,Mtsl%itf® 

•38uMteteav$tGifcimS9t hM^8abB5aedi!fi^LGtli£r!iQtfliaJi:ea5$ 
hado^nJOMEcfcltte if^soiiio|ii.i?l^(Dii!soIibert^;2tjBe rMf- 
damental pdneipi^xrf HariitabisiaQ i^m Mesbco^^ed. •JSli^ 
^efidtiteff-'fttenqs^foig ^to ithe[i'J[:ftliLdr5rfeixiqeaafre^^Ia 
l^o^ass nigtstiatiltdofrgBafteB thebfiJawikitiDnailjhat-ijit 
^ddched: ftk^sarmat/ vihrat iorisT in . arije^db-Srdeijed . scteiiti 
¥i^irfiirii,2n;jrl orh bns .:no>lB;;0 adi xo r:oij;;aea-i^q 
snolfinthesr^as^- jdaysflctlii^Tesillla^nbejei n6i:\r^^h.jr. 

tfch ,g^ii!V-Qr^an-e^i:iand luxur.iQ^SvJfdrk'iturd^rniiidiitheiT 
s'&S'fe 'MMnjivtdTthe.. severe M£a^/Aoyo(l)rui2^tandlmlbh 
sfl'^ckp ofeT^r^:^ wets yfm^d,iaDr:t2aft^\sji*efrfniitiisikmaat 
fmmd 'ia# t^riihifri. ril^ebmhM smkntx^v^ ,iwds-!tia 
elitii-chgOftig'p^DpMt .I'ipeyi^qvetire-'jflaiid^ dcessMj^^ the 
W^i§mt^&d rhi^cmbsk^tim/ the^piiitlpfifiibyjMiiipandritM 
fe(>h^fbgs^fll y^di i¥medfiaiidrjpralyjeirfullfi xEh^ps^jart 
ttiAit^P p^^e*ftedC'% ifchei^^mtding qis.t]m ^hticdjcibl- 
ony in one place was a temptation to the IndffllHk/ta'nd 
^ligT]bft9e^o£'tPafg6di^4igdofiifeae theiimioiiiisip scrMTef ul 
te^^^n^tbe-'defkisj^rti Th^:r«kinldispdilidi?tiib ^hcis 
'da5^-^i^''^^J|]fte^tjteg.^h©dse>^3tlleflmihi^r/iIoMinva 
fe^^nteft ki tMeI^"ei-*g3@fliJtet^h^iTki asonHi-i^hcerdrdrE tks 
fe«$rnJft^y/ Sdttietitn^fii$i-i^ot£i"d)vpreBaidflIj©nbtrhe some 
tl^ '''SiCrid^ toir n^iitedkyi t^Mtil vh® rhcsi ^hahstiejirli^. 
-Aftd-Jth^^iM^figte-fololaMt eKhkji^ ah^itlhiiig:/ i^ wasv-i^^, 
■^ki"^§>'Ae 't^ufejfeii^^ifebegj^fl boO b j£dV/'' .bsmiBb 



io rp^^fn^ tl]fev/ngWf-4tifl{ieflGe§-tlMr#-%^§'i% t^HSnge 

iTh^ gbvepnof Hi^ove in his great coa<2h-draj#ri by- six 
^llBrses decked in resplendent harness, withj hi& MV- 
aei^ie^/'iar^tYrtsilin .atteildance. Other weatthype^^^ 
■^^^ c56a5be^:'\^lh"^o!nr horses i and they wiatkfed?the 
.Str^et^ k their c(5cked hat^, and y^HoW^ red, Muev^r 
^gredn f^ waistcoats. Their houses wer^ large Utid 
ifilledc%itH -satet-Wstfe,? iiftetf, t"Ghliia,nif v^^M^i^ e'tfil 
Ifapfestry. '-^ They-indlft^^ iii riding^ hunting, 'fi^hittg, 
f&nd skating^. ■ The "^e'ighi-^rides ■ended in dancing' aM 
■^a4^d-playing p^t^is, qgfjid stiiey di^w • the lirie dt'tot 
one amusement, theatergoing. '\luo 

-, : .Forf.Mao^; years "-cormsiutiiieation with otherot^wns 
^was.jby ineans. of ithe. pfostrthor&^s/ and raiTphfiof ji®- 
4i^je'^ tenlejied: iarrQie tsafilfcaBifk£[ foo^fiitoillfe inside 
his trip once a month, arid iiie'sui^m^' biicC' in 'three 
.weeks. No oae irt.the villag^e was so hig-h and mio^htv 
^tJii^t:g^.Wrf>ul4; uf^ fi^^|^.4^.;|rje^t 4|n^^m^i} earr|er,.,ajnd 
fpb^.hiim with: que^i6ns.cabotitlBQStoiii.,atidi'Mm«5jYm^^ 

Wd the tteii<!^^F'-^a4fe ^fbvl^^^^-%h^"^^e?fffe c^^tlffe 

M: . - - -:.i: ricd b n^od sv£ri lanrn bns ^ripasiujoiq 
P?!^^^ 70 Mo^---gni J£3-.- 3:lt avjsb -iolhi-D nl .sons 

the 4iard^s^ in: t$ii' dWo^fesf.- '^lic^'M^^i-sgoEai^^iefife 
W'that oatlie^naa^'^foilowmg thfe fert^of V'^iff | 
Vi^^^ J,^kQ^'r(io^^tk^ ;nieeting-hoi|s^._ !^(^3r}^jg t^fv^^zq^. 
Wheri s-^e^iIcofiiktet^Vj ^he>Iog!^&^ri'ithfen^dds^?::#o?^Keg^ 
^litirctesl ^rffle %realtmr fei^he^ice! ^^^^cKHs^^ 
:iiig bowl. It, pni^p^. : bfi tf u)y ^ recqrqed .^Jj many, ra 
■chrisOm^chiidqq v'Pisd '©cf: teing: baptizedi'^b One^crtugl 
parson, she tells us, believed in infant immer^ibt?. ^^ 



28 THE UNITED STATES 

The fireplace in colonial homes was an item of 
much importance. Governor Eaton had nineteen of 
them in his house,, and Parson Davenport thirteen, 
and yet they could not keep warm. It was always a 
case of roasting one's face and freezing one's back. 
Fierce, icy blasts blew down the great chimneys, 
and Cotton Mather noted in his journal on a Janu- 
ary Sabbath, in 1697, that as he shivered before *'a 
great fire, that the juices forced out at the end of 
short billets of wood by the heat of the flames on 
which they lay, yett froze into ice on their coming 
out." 

No more interesting description of the New Eng- 
land fireplace can be found than that given us by 
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle in her ''Customs and Fash- 
ions in Old New England " : 

"Around the great, glowing fireplace in an old 
New England kitchen centered all of the homeliness 
and comfort that could be found in a New England 
home. The very aspect of the domestic hearth was 
picturesque and must have been a beneficent influ- 
ence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or as it was 
called in England, the backbar, stretched from ledge 
to ledge, or lug to lug, high up the yawning chim- 
ney, and held a motley collection of pothooks and 
trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which 
in turn suspended at various heights over the fire, 
pots, kettles, and other cooking utensils. In the hearth 
corners were displayed skillets and trivets, peels and 
slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and set- 
tles. Above, on the clavel-piece, were festooned 
strings of dried apples, pumpkins, peppers, and ears 
of corn." 



THE UNITED STATES 29 

Mrs. Earle tells us that the lug-pole often became 
brittle or charred and let its weight of precious cook- 
ing utensils into the fire, and the Puritans were glad 
to adopt a Yankee invention known as a crane^ made 
of iron. And so we have Longfellow's poem, *'Tlie 
Hanging of the Crane." Besides the cooking uten- 
sils there were the andirons, the tongs, the long, brass- 
handled shovel,- and the bellows. All these things we 
prize now as heirlooms, but do we ever think of the 
discomfort and inconvenience they symbolize of early 
colonial days? When we think of the fireplace, 
we think of the spinning-wheel too. All the yarn was 
spun in the homes, and in some homes the weaving 
was done, too. Early colonial days are known as 
the age of the homespun. 

From the hardships and difficulties that attended 
courting in colonial times, it would seem that not all 
the world loved a lover. The family always kept an 
eye on the lovers. Their courting was done in the 
living-room in the presence of father, mother, brother, 
and sister. For their convenience a hollow tube, 
called a whispering rod, was placed in their hands, 
and through this they poured all their billing and 
cooing. The magistrate seemed to think young men 
needed protection against the wiles of the fair sex. 
In 1660, it is recorded that Jacob Muiline went into 
the room with Sarah Tuttle, and, seizing her hands, 
kissed her. The court asked Sarah if Jacob had "in- 
veigled her affections," and she answered spiritedly, 



b£l^@toYnieds"hjsS wd^ Inisde&wefrlJaoM^teddiag^'ii'ltoe 
l>kfi^i ha<ii:tD ^eipablfeta^disttinteast $aite% lih^oteet* 
Ifi^KoAMe: vq lt;"wks'Tiot iirK^Miraofn 'foif^^ longer to 
drite g^ercto the tome of his .sweethearit §atgr4iy 
ima'ftingn^Wi-atSter:b:fe©iitQ2itec(iaimesHis5T^ 
motijgcii^oafM; ±)^ /baking, kdd^ib' toial(l : nofti bfes iiiiicH 
trbubie-id bake a -iittleLieMrfe.foiocthesiTkredding- feasl; 
tte3pki)sp"©cdiref bride' ; wGfcdd.5find :a .snitabie rwiutB 
^r^ffi^^'^incM^ Her i^owiisgv/thecBMs wouid Be'ii^&ihfe 
iishedt &i\QAnfl/moTmn^^3^wd-^Mmi}m<Mingo iMlQW om 
^^\'^Ymmii 33rno:[ srnoc ni brrj: .Eornorl eiiJ :i: nnqa 

They were not allowed to jjix^^ -^J(>^e,5j^fi4o"^^§ W^ 
mm^^}pmi ^jMmn^ME JS^ii^e^^^- -They .were 

man in the township to kill six blackbirds, or three 

crows whilahe remained single. As a penalty for not 

,-i3fno-id ,-iafljbrn .ioi.mi lo z^:d: ■ / / • - -ni 

doinsf it, he should not be married until he obeyed the 
^scfnr v/oiiOii £ SDnsinsvnoo 71^11^ ..^ .. .■.^:>o.o ^n£ 

,gDfmfI :tr9fl:r ni baofilq .ZBW ^boi ^iisQi^inw X:> dsIIbd 
Puritan rnmisters did not penorrn'tne ceremony 



01 marriage, this duty faUirtg to the lot 61 the mag- 
istratS. Governor Bellingham mtrriea, nimg^Tf 10 



WA teS^^^^i^a*^^ - t.id-^ffd' hik brid6 ^ btit tWenfy^ 
'fe^^ W!\eS"!f^%&-^'b^bi^fit^\5J^2f^i:^fgiofft 

iavit^!i^^^liJferf W^ete^hg^^8ri ^f beM k^^ 



^^l.i)^g|si^t/ .-ill jQiili^gn^i^ wotoaiip a'-jserYkHt^.-sammiiS^h 

BinrJYQ-S, btij^(hri£^QMn%.;'&rifmerfod) JohB7Qj8 srIT 
-no/'.Mi^ dn7]y<isht^4^M}p, awantssa^blabxiDldrimatE as 
tfei&^-€^tl ^ttr.thi}S)b|)S(ljy 7 slil rbirlw fijiw ssoqai n£ib 
movlnd.ej^,7/l5ldQ,"osfee'ianiwie3[ifed.i:o3i-§ orb no aiBsy 
on "^^j2riJsa'y)ij(fH^\/m2gis1Irate CQld%,'!:obJf theslaxsli 
<l^s&f:^T a|}^ -4iy$siefc>mt|iQ!St\\j&altk/iiI,-3asi2t:3n%i8tm^ 
pf@Mri$icei^jfi5G m^ifibsaidlwil©:/,' ansibnl atlT .£in£V 
--i9rtod.,^6ynMe$ef J^aJly imiii3ckdidab ^tenbfc^ij^im 
sfelMfi§d l:o n^rri ,^ 8By/ nnoS^ loi ,cbnoi cIjo^'P'adi en oisv^ 
o:t H^dFjiP^aKiami hweai Qtiis^nli/wer.^.eyi^nrfeltrar^ief 
tfe&^3iid^:"frt^da^e,imMD^s- Ntrtbiirfg was fiE^ad^mift 
wM ai}5^gg^QaQnrpteaichjedi0!rr.!paa>liii!:saiig. eTThci-fieigfe 
bQC)5c©aei|otQ^h0rrb3f)rfheotoMiiigtlt)fathecfe©lJ andvsalg 
etB^l^jstkestk^ :.%sfe/'ca3rrWLt0^ hififcg^al^e, hisbfiiend^ 
standing by while he was buried. FunecaL^ipoekii &id 
di^.gies/ were' wititteh and ptibidshed, andiia-J^rthfefoAx^ke, 
sdcnethitig aefter theinaturerof the p'cesentiliifisib'jwcikeg 
hisff ri^idi thougM oi/all theg'ojod'thingisitheyt cbu|di6a[y 
agouti himv AriimSitatiQ^l;t^i^t^hJeillneral'JGa^)qe iri'tke form 
qfeia}pai;";0fT^O3msi;ari4 ^alvfttHesrairnring'..' oFkej gfeVes 
mi^ht.-fea 'Black icir'^whitqoaiiydrihe rnsgs ^ter^ edgraved 
svrifbh^moliosiy" ^uxrh//as,"]oDeaIth' parts 2.«aitedf:iheaWs-i 
'i^Rcejislire /f(M!tdfia%f" rfgPi-^^^^'' berl£rIcfQ^low^<me^^ 
^Lib^tlmv sttin^DabTingsI bojBGiqafemall^ drfefitoinjlblslek 
enrnMeUAoMhcbi THeh^BtwasdMs^nQp&sitY/im ^ne^dl 
baled . fMdts i i^nd liqtEDr no-^fe .'AvasiojfitciY/ jnece$6air3e£to 



32 THE UNITED STATES 

spend a large part of a man's estate to bury him de- 
cently. Even town paupers had two or three gallons 
of rum or a barrel of cider given by the town to serve 
as "speeding libations at their unmourned funerals." 

The story of colonial New England and Virginia 
is stormy and tempestuous compared with the Aca- 
dian repose with which life rippled on for a hundred 
years on the green shores of the Delaware. From 
the arrival of Penn to the Revolution there are no 
points of exciting interest in the history of Pennsyl- 
vania. The Indians were friendly. Their children 
romped in the dooryards of the white families. There 
were no religious feuds, for Penn was a man of bound- 
less catholicity. All sects were freely welcomed to 
Pennsylvania. He was a Quaker, but he founded no 
church. He was an enthusiast, but not a bigot. His 
province presents, therefore^ the spectacle of a colony 
founded by religious zealots in which there was per- 
fect tolerance. 

Nothing illustrates more forcibly the improved so- 
cial conditions of eastern Pennsylvania than the 
changed facilities for travel. As late as 1783 there 
were eight populous townships in Bucks County in 
which there was not a single pleasure carriage of any 
sort. In that year, a full century after Penn's ar- 
rival, there was one ''chariot" owned in the entire 
region. A chariot was as high up in the world as a 
vehicle could then aspire. In two of the townships, 
then as now among the wealthiest in Bucks, there 
was not a two-horse wagon used until 1745. For 



THE UNITED STATES 33 

sixty years goods and passengers were transported 
on horseback. The distance to the store, the meet- 
ing-house, the smithy, and election places was great, 
and much time must have been consumed by the 
early settlers in going to them. 

The garb of the Pennsylvanians in the first cen- 
tury finds no imitation in the modern fashion-plate. 
Dr. Watson, an authority on Pennsylvania's early 
history, says that the laboring men wore buckskin for 
breeches, jackets of hemp and tow, wool hats, strong 
shoes with brass buckles^ and linsey and leather 
aprons. A "well-groomed" gentleman wore a coat 
with three or four plaits in the skirt wadded like a 
coverlet, cuffs to the elbow, and a broad-brimmed 
beaver hat. A woman in full fashion wore stiff 
whalebone stays worth eight or ten dollars, silk gown 
plaited in the back, sleeves twice as large as the arm, 
"locquet" buttons, and long-armed gloves. Brides 
in addition to this wore a long black hood. 

Property in slaves was quite common among the 
colonists in Bucks for a long time. There is little 
novelty in the statement that the early Pennsylvanians, 
as w^ell as the inhabitants of the other colonies, kept 
hiiman chattels, but the fact is brought vividly to 
mind when one finds in some of the old inventories 
of property human beings repeatedly inventoried with 
cattle, implements, and products. 

The ancient courts of the county were much more 
largely attended in proportion to the inhabitants than 
they are now. The news that court would set went 

3 



34 THE UNITED STATES 

abroad by word of mouth, and the colonists came 
long distances to attend the sessions. It was a great 
time for the exchanging of ''bits of tattle" afloat in 
far-off neighborhoods. The old records are full of 
proceedings against prisoners for debt. Sometimes 
the debtor was discharged by making satisfaction 
to his creditor '' by servitude " ; that is, he was sen- 
tenced by the court to serve each creditor long enough 
to discharge the debt. Robert Lawrence, in 1765, 
was sentenced to serve twenty creditors in succession. 
The limit of his temporary slavery was seven hun- 
dred and twenty-four days. When the debt was under 
ten pounds, and the debtor was a soldier ''in His 
Majesty's service," he was discharged. 

Among the interesting things in colonial Pennsyl- 
vania were the old inns, or taverns. They were in- 
troduced from England, and with them came the old 
sign-boards, some of which gave names to the Eng- 
lish inns for generations before they were set up in 
this country. The horse was repeatedly honored on 
these signs. He appeared in all colors, such as "The 
Sorrel Horse," "The Black Horse," "The Wagon and 
the Horse," etc. There was also "The Lion," "The 
Elephant," "The Bull's Head," "The White Bear." 
Agricultural implements and products also came in 
for representation on these signs. There was "The 
Harrow," "The Barley Sheaf," and "The Plow." Out 
on the highways were "The Halfway House," "The 
Traveler's Rest," "The Drover," and other appropri- 



THE UNITED STATES 35 

ate names. Along the river were "The Anchor," 
'The Waterman," 'The Deck Boat," etc. 

Penn dealt kindly with the Indians, and they re- 
quited him with a reverential love such as they evinced 
toward no other Englishman. The neighboring colo- 
nists waged bloody wars with the Indians who lived 
around them — now inflicting defeats which were al- 
most exterminating, and again, sustaining hideous 
massacres. Penn's Indians were his children and 
most loyal subjects. No drop of Quaker blood was 
ever shed by Indian hand in the Pennsylvania terri- 
tory. Soon after Penn's arrival he invited the chief 
men of the Indian tribes to a conference. The meet- 
ing took place beneath a huge elm tree. The path- 
less forest has long given way to the houses and 
streets of Philadelphia, but a marble monument points 
out to strangers the site of this memorable interview. 
Penn, with a few companions, unarmed and dressed 
according to the simple fashion of their sect, met the 
crowd of formidable savages. They met, he assured 
them, as brothers "on the broad pathway of good 
faith and good-will." No advantage was to be taken 
on either side. All was to be "openness and love." 
Strong in the power of truth and kindness, he bent 
the fierce savages of the Delaware to his will. They 
vowed "to live in love with William Penn and his 
children as long as the moon and sun shall endure " 
They kept their vow. Long years after, they were 
known to recount to strangers, with deep emotion, 



36 THE UNITED STATES 

the words which Penn had spoken to them under the 
old elm tree of Shakamaxon. 

From the beginning, the colonies contained many 
noted students of natural science. The soils, min- 
erals, plants, and animals of the new continent were 
all objects of keen research. Linnaeus, the noted 
Swedish naturalist, declared John Bartram, the 
Quaker gardener of Philadelphia, to be the "greatest 
natural botanist in the world." Virginia and the 
more southerly colonies had several botanists of Eu- 
ropean fame. But the scientific reputation of Amer- 
ica was established when Franklin, the sage of Phila- 
delphia, drew about him other gentlemen of kindred 
tastes and formed the American Philosophical Soci- 
ety. It was an important bond of union among the 
best men in all the colonies.^ 



A 



CHAPTER III 

EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 

T the close of the Revolutionary War, the colo- 
nists found themselves in possession of a vast 
tract of land beyond the Alleghanies, extending to 
the Mississippi River, of which they knew compara- 
tively little. It was something of magnitude that the 
original colonies, comprising 341,752 square miles, 
should add to their domain 488,248 square miles. 
Some of this great prize was included in the 
settled boundary lines of the colonies, and it is not 
surprising that a question of real ownership should 
come up. Those states that had no claim by right 
of boundary thought that the land should be held for 
the common benefit. Finally the states having bound- 
ary claims ceded them to the United States, and the 
federal government became owner of the vast tract. 
Sparks, in his "Expansion of the American People," 
says that "the national government might have held 
this land as subject territory and have treated its fu- 
ture inhabitants as colonists. Such had been the cus- 
tom in past history. But under the guiding hand of 
Thomas Jefferson, all that portion lying north and 
west of the Ohio River, a total of 265,878 square miles, 
was erected into a temporary territory, whose inhabi- 
tants were to enjoy the rights and privileges of the 
old states, with few exceptions. Further, even these 

37 



38 THE UNITED STATES 

exceptions were to be removed, and any portion erected 
into a state on a perfect equality with the other states 
whenever a sufficient number of inhabitants should 
render such action advisable." The number of in- 
habitants stipulated by the Ordinance of 1787 gov- 
erning the Northwest Territory was sixty thousand. 

By purchase and otherwise 2,666,854 square miles 
have been added to the original domain, and the thir- 
teen states have increased to forty-six^ with other ter- 
ritories waiting for admission. 

Much has been said of the weakness of the gov- 
ernment under the Articles of Confederation, and the 
Continental Congress has had its share of abuse, but, to 
its credit, let it be said that it originated "the public 
domain" and is responsible for the expansion of the 
nation by the addition of new states. 

When one considers that Louisville was founded 
one hundred and seventy years after the founding of 
Jamestown, one is apt to look upon the progress as 
slow, and to think that one hundred and seventy years 
was a long time for our ancestors to take in crossing 
the mountains. But once over the mountains, affairs 
moved forward more rapidly, and the campaign of 
1860 brought the presidency to Illinois, and that of 
1896 took still a longer stride in going to Nebraska 
for a candidate. 

The great hindrance that presented itself to the 
entering into and occupying the new country across 
the mountains was lack of communication between 
the different parts of the country. The Alleghany 



THE UNITED STATES 39 

Mountains was a barrier on the west, and there was 
but one known way over them. From the Indians, 
Virginia and Pennsylvania traders had learned to go 
up the Potomac River to the mouth of Wills' Creek, 
now the site of Cumberland, Maryland. Then they 
followed the trail over intervening ridges to the 
Youghiogheny, down which they drifted into the 
Monongahela, and so on into the Ohio. 

The first tide of western immigration turned south- 
ward. The Virginians were more adventurous than 
their northern neighbors and more wandering in their 
dispositions. Their chief crop was tobacco, the rais- 
ing of which quickly exhausted the soil. There were 
restless pioneers among them, like Daniel Boone. 
They had heard of the broad meadows covered 
sparsely with trees, of the ''blue grass," ''the mineral 
springs," and "the salt licks," where the buffalo and 
deer had lowered the ground perceptibly over many 
acres by licking its salt surface. The deer and buf- 
falo would provide them with food, and so Daniel 
Boone and his hardy companions pushed forward into 
Kentucky. It was a county of Virginia first, then 
Transylvania, and finally the state of Kentucky, be- 
ing the fifteenth state in the Union, the second one 
admitted after the Revolution. 

The buffalo had roamed the hills and meadows of 
Kentucky before the Virginians came, and had been 
the natural pathfinders, searching out water courses 
and feeding places. Daniel Boone found, when look- 
ing for a path from the western Virginia valleys to 



40 THE UNITED STATES 

the Kentucky region, that all the buffalo paths con- 
verged at the Cumberland gap. And so he laid out 
a road two hundred miles long, passing through the 
gap into the blue-grass region. Afterwards the Vir- 
ginia legislature accepted the road as a legal way to 
their Kentucky possessions. Later the Kentucky leg- 
islature adopted this road as one of its thoroughfares 
and placed a toll on it for its repair. Finally it crossed 
the Ohio and passed through St. Vincent (now Vin- 
cennes, Indiana) to the French settlement in Illinois. 
It was the famous ''Wilderness Road." 

Kentucky was the most individualized of the early 
states, and its history is typical with the various move- 
ments which have perplexed the nation, and involves 
almost every problem with which the nation has had 
to deal. Throughout the nineteenth century Ken- 
tucky produced men who have filled posts of honor. 
While no president has ever been elected who was at 
the time of his election a citizen of the State, Taylor 
and Lincoln were both born within her borders. 
Richard N. Johnson and John C. Breckenridge repre- 
sented Kentucky in the Vice-Presidency, while men 
like Clay, the four Breckenridges, Crittenden, Car- 
lisle, and many others have been leading spirits in 
the Senate and House of Representatives^. She has 
had her fair share, and more, on the supreme bench 
and at foreign capitals. In the pulpit and at the bar 
she has occupied a conspicuous position. And this 
despite the unfortunate division of the State into two 
almost hostile sections, growing out of the inevitable 



THE UNITED STATES 41 

difference in the population of the barren mountains, 
whose rich mineral wealth is just now being developed, 
and that of her fertile valleys. Her school system 
has long been upon the best basis, both financially and 
educationally. 

You know there is sort of a joke attached to Ken- 
tucky, that nearly all her men of importance are 
colonels, and that they like above all things else to 
talk of their descent from the English nobility. And 
perhaps the men have aimed too much to be strong, 
brave, and accomplished ; the women have valued 
beauty and the amenities of life beyond their due; 
the libraries have been filled with old books rather 
than new, and they have been learned rather than 
read. Notwithstanding this, there is much of the 
spirit of the backwoodsman still lingering in Ken- 
tucky. It has been said that, as Arthur's horn still 
echoes through the valleys of Cornwall, so the crack 
of the rifle of Daniel Boone may still be heard among 
the rugged mountains of Kentucky. 

Among the foothills of the mountains there is a 
little stream known as Lulbegrund Creek, and the 
story is told in an old pioneer's diary of how a little 
band of early settlers camped one day upon this 
stream and in the evening gathered round the camp- 
fire, when Daniel Boone took out of his pocket a lit- 
tle book, which was "The Travels of One Gulliver," 
and read to them about the town of Lulbegrund, and 
they gave this name to the stream upon whose banks 
they had lighted their camp-fire. 



42 THE UNITED STATES 

The territory west and north of the Ohio River 
was not taken up and settled as early as that on the 
south for several reasons. One, and perhaps the prin- 
cipal one, was that the Indians disregarded the treaty 
of Fort Stanwix, New York, giving the white man 
a right to penetrate the trans-Alleghanian region. 
Another was that the ownership of the land was 
contested. Finally, when the disputed claims were 
yielded, and good faith with the Indians had been 
established, the government conceived the idea of 
selling these lands for the benefit of the public treas- 
ury. Thomas Hutchins^ ''Geographer of the United 
States," was ordered to make a survey of the public 
lands, preparatory to offering them for sale. He 
adopted the rectangular system, and platted into 
townships six miles square. Each township was sub- 
divided into thirty-six equal shares called sections. 
Each section was a mile square, and contained six 
hundred and forty acres. The section was subdivided 
by emphasizing the middle cross lines into groups of 
fours, or "quarters," designated as northeast, south- 
east, etc. And so we have the beginning of the sys- 
tem of "public lands." 

These lands were sold at the nominal sum of one 
dollar an acre. In every township lot sixteen was 
reserved for the maintenance of public schools, and 
one-third of all gold, silver, lead, and copper was 
kept for the benefit of the general government. These 
first public lands are represented by the states of 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and that 



THE UNITED STATES 43 

part of Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi. 
Speaking of this experiment of Congress, 'Sparks 
says that ''speculators and swindlers flocked into the 
land offices when they were opened. Large blocks 
of land fell into the hands of a few men, and for a 
time a system of foreign landlordism threatened. 
But with all the abuse connected with the disposal of 
the public lands, it was fulfilling its best purpose in 
being parceled out among the people for the making 
of their homes." 

The peopling of this Northwest Territory by 
companies from the Eastern States, such as the Ohio 
Company, under the leadership of Rev. Manasseh 
Cutler, of Ipswich, Mass., furnish many interesting 
historic incidents. The first towns to be established 
were Marietta, Zanesville, Chillicothe, and Cincinnati. 
After the Ohio Company came the Connecticut Com- 
pany, that secured all the territory bordering Lake 
Erie, save a small portion known as fire lands and 
another portion known as congress lands. The land 
taken up by the Connecticut people was called the 
Western Reserve, and was settled almost entirely by 
New England people. The remainder of the state 
of Ohio was settled by Virginians and Pennsylvanians. 
On account of the British having control of the lakes 
Ontario and Erie, the Massachusetts and Connecticut 
people made their journey into the Western Reserve 
through the southern part of the State. General Moses 
Cleaveland, the agent for the Connecticut Land Com- 
pany, led a body of surveyors to the tract, venturing 



44 THE UNITED STATES 

by way of Lake Ontario. He quieted the Indian 
claims to the eastern portion of the reserve, by giving 
them five hundred pounds, two head of cattle and 
one hundred gallons of whisky. Landing at the mouth 
of the Conneaut River, General Moses Cleaveland 
and his party of fifty, including two women^ cele- 
brated Independence Day, 1796, by a feast of pork 
and beans with bread. A little later a village was 
established at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, 
which was given the name of Cleaveland, in honor 
of the agent of the company. It is related that the 
name was afterward shortened to Cleveland by one 
of the early editors because he could not get so many 
letters into the heading of his newspaper. 

And so the country beyond the Alleghanies was 
prepared for the opportunities of a higher civiliza- 
tion. Schools and colleges were soon organized, the 
land was put under splendid cultivation and rewarded 
the inhabitants with abundant crops. The Western 
States grew in wealth so rapidly that they were en- 
abled to establish colleges to be maintained from the 
public fund. At Athens was founded the Ohio Uni- 
versity, and at Oxford, fourteen miles from Cincin- 
nati, the Miami University, both supported by the 
State. These colleges are still maintained, though 
Miami is partially self-supporting. 

In 1805 the Western Reserve College was estab- 
lished at Hudson, Ohio, being the first educational 
institution in the northern part of the State. The site 
of the college was purchased from the Connecticut 



THE UNITED STATES 45 

Company, who owned the Western Reserve, hence 
the name of the institution. Besides these there were 
several smaller colleges established by religi )us de- 
nominations. At the time of the establishing of these 
western institutions of learning. Old Harvard was 
one hundred and sixty-four years old, William and 
Mary one hundred and seven, and Yale, after which 
the Western Reserve was modeled, even to its build- 
ings and surroundings, was one hundred years old. 
The citizens of the United States at this period com- 
menced to evince a national pride in its institutions, 
discouraging the sending of her young men to Eu- 
rope for an education. 

A review of the old magazines and newspapers 
of these early days gives one an idea of the rapidity 
with which the genius of invention was moving over 
the New World. We read of a drill machine for 
seeding, a windmill^, a sun-dial, fire-escapes, the 
steamboat, the cotton-gin, etc. Patents for making 
candles, flour, and meal, punches for types, and dis- 
tilling followed.* During the first three years after 
the Revolution there were sixty-seven patents issued. 
Sparks says that the number continued small until 
after the War of 1812 threw America on her own 
resources and so secured an industrial independence. 

Before the Revolution and in the first decade of 
the Union, the seat of government had been shifted 
from point to point without any seeming settled abi- 
ding-place, and the necessity soon became evident for a 
center of government. After casting about for some 



46 THE UNITED STATES 

suitable location, a point at the junction of the east- 
ern branch with the Potomac proper, just above 
Alexandria, was selected on account of the splendid 
facilities for shipping interests and a navy-yard. Ten 
miles square was demanded by the government for 
its seat, and in April, 1791, a corner boundary stone 
was set with Masonic ceremonies, and ten-mile lines 
were run at right angles, from the ends of which the 
square was completed. The land enclosed thereby was 
named the Territory of Columbia, afterward changed to 
the District of Columbia. To the city in the center was 
given, by universal consent, the name of Washington. 
The district embraced the towns of Alexandria, 
Georgetown, Hamburg, Carrollsburg, and several 
other villages. In September, 1793^ the work on the 
capitol had so far progressed that the corner-stone 
was laid. President Washington acting as Worship- 
ful Master of the Masonic ceremonies. The proper 
salutes were fired by the Alexandria Volunteer Ar- 
tillery. The newspapers of the day recorded that "a 
procession took place amid a brilliant crowd of spec- 
tators of both sexes." Later all repaired to *^an ex- 
tensive booth where an ox of five hundred pounds' 
weight was barbecued, of which the company gen- 
erally partook with every abundance of other recre- 
ation." 

The purchase of the territory west of the Mis- 
sissippi River, known as the Louisiana Purchase, 
made by President Jefferson^ is familiar to all. It 
was one of the most important moves ever made by 



THE UNITED STATES 47 

the United States. Of the purchase Jefferson said: 
"The territory acquired has more than doubled the 
area of the United States, and the new part is not 
inferior to the old in soil, climate, productions, and 
important communications." He would use the newly 
acquired territory immediately by removing thither all 
the Indians east of the river, and opening their lands 
to settlement. "When we shall be full on this side," 
he said, "wq may lay off a range of states on the 
western bank from head to mouthy and so, range 
after range, advancing compactly as we multiply." 
All sorts of ridicule was directed at President Jef- 
ferson for his purchase, which at that time was con- 
sidered very unwise. Federal newspapers said that 
the mountain would be found to be crowned by a 
salt American eagle ; another that it was simply Lot's 
wife magnified by the process of time. Other writers 
insisted that the Louisiana country contained a spring 
from which poured golden eagles already coined; 
that there was a mountain of refined sugar and a lake 
of pure whisky. This ridicule was called forth by 
Jefferson's report, to Congress, for which he had to 
rely on exaggerated material from French books and 
French travelers. 

For many days after the purchase the French 
flag continued to float from its staff in the Place 
d'Armes, until a message from Napoleon confirmed 
the sale. On Dec. 20, 1803, Laussat met the Ameri- 
can commissioners in the city hall, and after a sim- 
ple ceremony of delivering the keys, all walked out on 



48 THE UNITED STATES 

the balcony. The French flag was lowered to half- 
mast and the stars and stripes raised to the same point. 
While they remained there, a salute was fired. Then 
the United States flag slowly mounted to the top of 
the staff, and the French flag descended, to be caught 
by a sergeant-major and wrapped around his body. 
In that way it was carried to Laussat, escorted by 
fifty old French soldiers of the city who had kept vol- 
untary guard during the short period it floated. The 
transfer of Louisiana, says Sparks, from whom we 
take the above description, was one of the few volun- 
tary surrenders of dominion in the world's history. 
It was the final exit of France from the American 
continent. 

The settlement of the country beyond the Rocky 
Mountains began with the Lewis and Clark expedi- 
tion, the details of which are so familiar as not to 
need recounting. The annexation of Texas and th€ 
conquest of California also need no minute descrip- 
tion. Gold as a factor in American expansion was of 
importance, and hastened the settlement of the far 
West by bringing emigrants from all parts of the 
world, and adventurers from the East and Middle 
West of our own continent. The ''prairie schooner" 
has left its trail across the continent, and civilization 
has wiped out completely the American frontier. 

'Tt is a far cry," says Sparks, "from the Indian 
wigwam to the comfortable American home and from 
the packhorse of the pioneer to the palatial railway 
train. But the transformation was accomplished 



THE UNITED STATES 49 

through the expansion of the American people within 
two and a half centuries." In dealing with the ques- 
tion of expansion fully, it is necessary to speak of the 
evolution of the various national institutions, our laws, 
religion, education, manufactures, and inventions, and 
these we hope to survey briefly in future chapters. 
As Sparks says, "the interior conquest of the country 
being now complete, the frontier disappears, and the 
hunger for land and trade brings this isolated and 
peaceful country into a foreign war and the world's 
councils. The cycle of intercontinental expansion hav- 
ing ended, the era of extracontinental expansion is 
inaugurated. Whether for better or for worse, the 
United States finds itself entering on the Old-World 
policy of external possessions. The verdict lies sealed 
in the hand of time. But the success of the past is 
the hope of the future." 

In view of the possible future that awaits us as a 
nation, it might be beneficial to look for a moment 
upon our national characteristic, which is said to be 
"cosmopolitanism." It may be somewhat doubted 
whether it is so great a virtue as we have been led 
to believe. Is it not possible that catholicity would 
stand us better in hand? The catholic mind passes 
readily into the patriotic ; the cosmopolitan is more apt 
to degenerate into the cosmopolite. And will it not 
be a misfortune when it becomes true^ as evidences 
to-day indicate, that the typical American will prefer 
to direct his ambition toward an ideal life beyond the 
eastern seas, rather than to a life of generous strug- 



50 THE UNITED STATES 

gle in its own western territory? The expansion of 
America should bring with it the deepening of Amer- 
icanism, and the highest of all virtues in a citizen 
should be love of country/ 



CHAPTER IV 

CHANGES OF A QUARTER CENTURY 

I SHALL try to enumerate sundry differences be- 
tween the United States of 1907 and the United 
States of 1870 or 1883. That which is most noticed 
in America to-day is its prodigious material develop- 
ment. Industrial growth, swift thirty or forty years 
ago, advances more swiftly now. The rural districts 
are being studded with villages, the villages are grow- 
ing into cities, the cities are stretching out long arms 
of suburbs which follow the lines of road and rail- 
way in every direction. The increase of wealth, even 
more remarkable than the increase of population, 
impresses a European more deeply now than ever 
before because the contrast with Europe is greater. 
In America every class seems rich compared with the 
corresponding class in the Old World. The huge 
fortunes, the fortunes of those whose income reaches 
or exceeds a million dollars a year, are, of course, far 
more numerous than in any other country. But the 
absence of pauperism is still more remarkable. In 
1870 I carefully examined the poor-law system of 
two great Eastern cities, and found that, although 
there were very few persons needing or receiving sup- 
port at the public expense, the number was expected 
to grow steadily and quickly as the cities grew. To- 
day I am told that in these cities pauperism, though 



52 THE UNITED STATES 

of course absolutely larger, increases more slowly 
than population. 

Life has for a long time been comfortable and 
easy for the working man and the clerk and shopman, 
as compared with life for the like class in Europe. 
But for the classes standing next above the laborers 
in point of income, life was in 1870 in general plain 
and simple, simpler than the life led by the richer 
class in England or France. Lvixury was then con- 
fined to a very few. Simplicity is not so common to- 
day. The "easier life," however, does not mean that 
life is taken easily. It consists in having and spend- 
ing more money, not in doing less work. Everybody, 
from the workman to the millionaire, has a larger 
head of steam on than his father had. Time is more 
precious. More pains is taken to save it. More 
work is squeezed into the hour and the day. 

In this age, more than in any preceding age, 
wealth means power, offensive power in war as well 
as financial power in peace. It was an old and favor- 
ite commonplace of political moralists that the rich 
nations, dwelling in fertile plains and enervated by 
luxury, became the victims of the poor nations, who, 
inhabiting barren mountains, were hardier and fiercer 
in fight. It is not so now. Naval war is, above all 
things, an afi'air of scientific apparatus, of ironclads, 
of torpedoes, of guns with long range and quick fire. 
Land war depends on the best artillery, the best rifles 
and ammunition, the best commissariat. War is an 
affair of science, and science is costly. All the great 



THE UNITED STATES 53 

nations can produce good fighting men, and all may 
happen to have a good general. But some have far 
greater pecuniary resources than others. None has 
resources comparable to those of the United States. 
The Republic is as wealthy as any two of the greatest 
European nations, and is capable, if she chooses, of 
quickly calling into being a vast fleet and a vast 
army. Her wealth and power has in it something 
almost alarming. 

With this extraordinary material development it 
is natural that, in the United States, business, that is 
to say industry, commerce, and finance, should have 
more and more come to overshadow and dwarf all 
other interests, all other occupations. Every European 
who visited the country since the beginning of the 
last century seems to have been struck by this fact. 
It is more striking now than it was thirty-five years 
ago. But the contrast with Europe is not greater now 
than it was then. Rather is it less^ for in this respect 
England and America have been following in Amer- 
ica's footsteps. In them, too, business interests hold 
a far more conspicuous place than formerly. The 
landowner, the professional man, the man of letters, 
are in those countries relatively less important than 
they were ; the financier, the manufacturer, more im- 
portant. Business is king. In American society, as 
I have said, this feature is an old one. One illustra- 
tion sustains this view. Lawyers are now, to a greater 
extent than formerly, business men, a part of the great 
organized system of industrial and financial enterprise. 



54 THE UNITED STATES 

They are less than formerly students of a particular 
kind of learning, the practitioners of a peculiar art. 
And they do not seem to be quite so much of a dis- 
tinct professional class. Some one seventy years ago 
called them the aristocracy of the United States, mean- 
ing that they led public opinion in the same way as 
the aristocracy of England led opinion there. They 
still comprise a large part of the intellect of the na- 
tion. But one is told that they do not take so keen 
an interest in purely legal and constitutional questions 
as they did in the days of Story and Webster, or 
even in those of William M. Evarts and Charles 
O'Connor. Business is king. 

Commerce and industry themselves have developed 
new features. Twenty-two years ago there were no 
trusts ; and trade-unions, though they existed, were 
much less powerful^ much less pervasive, much less 
thoroughly organized. Even then, however, corpora- 
tions had covered a larger proportion of the whole field 
of industry and commerce in America than in Europe, 
and their structure was more flexible and more effi- 
cient. To-day this is still more the case; while as 
for trusts, they have become one of the most salient 
phenomena of the country. They fix the attention, 
they excite the alarm, of economists and politicians 
as well as of traders in the Old World, while they 
exercise and baffle the ingenuity of American legis- 
lators. Working men follow, though hitherto with 
unequal steps, the efforts at combination which the 
lords of production and distribution have been ma- 



THE UNITED STATES 55 

king. The consumer stands by, if not with folded 
hands, yet with so far no clear view as to the steps 
which he may take for his own protection. Perhaps 
his prosperity — for he is prosperous — helps him to be 
acquiescent. 

The example of the United States, the land in 
which individualism has been most conspicuously vig- 
orous, may seem to suggest that the world is passing 
out of a stage of individualism and returning to that 
earlier stage in which groups of men formed the units 
of society. The bond of association was, in those 
early days, kinship, real or supposed, and a servile 
or quasi-servile dependence of the weak upon the 
strong. Now it is the power of wealth which enables 
the few to combine so as to gain command of the 
sources of wealth ; and the stronger the employers 
become and the less they have a personal tie (such 
as employers once had) with the workmen, so much 
the more do the workmen feel compelled to try how 
they can advance their material interests by the use 
of similar methods. In both cases there is a loss of 
that individual liberty which the last generation was 
taught to expect from the progress of civilization. 
Power becomes concentrated in a few hands, be they 
those of the men who control the trusts or those of 
the men who lead the unions. Is it a paradox to 
observe that it is because the Americans have been 
the most individualistic of peoples, they are now 
the people among whom the art of combination has 
reached its maximum? 



56 THE UNITED STATES - 

We are ceasing to be a folk of country dwellers, for 
the reason that the greater cities extend themselves 
with amazing speed, and that many areas are becoming 
so covered with villages as to differ little from cities. 
There is a general disposition to migrate from rural 
districts to centers of population, where a brisker life 
and more amusements can be enjoyed. The change 
is all the more remarkable because agriculture con- 
tinues to be prosperous. It has been accelerated by 
those applications of machinery to agricultural work 
which enable a farm to be worked by a smaller staff 
than was formerly needed. Whenever one travels in 
the Eastern and Northern States, one sees new towns 
rising along the lines of the railroads, and the older 
towns spreading out. The eye as well as the census 
table tells one that the people are becoming a people 
subject to city influences. Already, though the popu- 
lation which lives outside towns with less than eight 
thousand inhabitants is numerically larger (almost two- 
thirds), still it is urban ways and habits, urban opin- 
ions, urban tendencies, that are beginning to prevail 
In the United States. This process goes on steadily. 
It will go on all the faster because the good land of 
the Northwest has now been practically all taken up, 
while even the irrigation of the dry lands of the south 
central West can not redress the balance by providing 
a new rural population to set out against the increase 
of the cities. The change may be regrettable. Jeffer- 
son would have regretted it. But it is unavoidable. 
It will tend to increase that nervous strain, that sense 



THE UNITED STATES 57 

of tension, which Americans are already deemed to 
show as compared with the more sluggish races of 
Europe. There will be less repose than ever in life. 
Health may not suffer, nor the death rate increase, 
for cities can now be made to show as low a mortality 
as most country places. Yet the physical strength 
of the average man may not be quite the same, and 
his mental constitution will almost certainly be dif- 
ferent. It may not be inferior — indeed, it may be 
more alert and versatile. But it will be different. 

There has been within these last thirty-five years 
a development of the higher education in the United 
States perhaps without a parallel in the world. Pre- 
viously the Eastern States had but a very few univer- 
sities whose best teachers were on a level with the 
teachers in the universities of western Europe. There 
were a great many institutions bearing the name of 
university over the Northern and Middle States and 
the West, and a smaller number in the South, but they 
gave instruction which, though in some places it 
was sound and thorough as far as it went, was really 
the instruction rather of a secondary school than of 
a university in the proper sense. No doubt there are 
still a great many whose standard of teaching and 
examination is that of a school, not of a true univer- 
sity. But there are also many which have risen to 
the European standard, and many others which are 
moving rapidly toward it. Roughly speaking, for it 
is impossible to speak with exactness, America has 
now not less than fifteen or perhaps even twenty seats 



58 THE UNITED STATES 

of learning fit to be ranked beside the universities 
of Germany, France, and England as respects the com- 
pleteness of the instruction which they provide and 
the thoroughness at which they aim. Even more no- 
ticeable is the amplitude of the provision now made 
for the study of the natural sciences, and of those 
arts in which science is applied to practical ends. In 
this respect the United States has gone ahead of Great 
Britain, aided no doubt by the greater pecuniary re- 
sources which not a few of her universities possess, 
and which they owe to the wise liberality of private 
benefactors. In England nothing is so hard as to 
get money from private persons for educational pur- 
poses. Mr. Carnegie's splendid gift to the University 
of Scotland stands almost alone. In America noth- 
ing is so easy. There is, indeed, no better indication 
of the prosperity of the country and of its intelligence 
than the annual record of the endowments bestowed 
on the universities by successful business men, some 
of whom have never themselves had more than a 
common-school education. 

The improvement in the range and quality of uni- 
versity teaching is a change scarcely more remarkable 
than the increased afflux of students. It seems (for 
I have not worked the matter out in figures, as I am 
giving impressions and not statistics) to have grown 
much faster than population has grown, and to be- 
token an increased desire among parents and young 
men to obtain a complete intellectual equipment for 
life. The number of undergraduates at Harvard is 



THE UNITED STATES 59 

much larger than is the number who resort to Oxford ; 
the number at Yale is larger than the number at 
Cambridge (England). Five leading universities of 
the Eastern States— Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Prince- 
ton, Pennsylvania— count as many students as do all 
the' universities of England. And whereas in Eng- 
land the vast majority of students go to prepare 
themselves for some profession,— law, journalism, 
medicine, engineering, or the ministry of the Estab- 
lished Church,— there is in America a considerable 
proportion who intend to choose a business career. 
It is quite generally felt that the young man is all 
the more likely to succeed in business if he goes to it 
with a mind widely and thoroughly trained. 

This feature of recent American development has 
an important bearing on the national life. It is a coun- 
terpoise to the passion, growing always more intense, 
for material progress, to the eagerness to seize every 
chance, to save every moment, to get the most out of 
every enterprise. It tends to diffuse a taste for sci- 
entific and literary knowledge among a class to most 
of whom, in other countries, few opportunities have 
been opened for acquiring such a taste. It adds to 
the number of those who may find some occasion m 
their business life for turning a knowledge of natural 
science to practical account, and so benefiting the 
country as well as themselves. Nor is its social in- 
fluence to be overlooked. 

When I pass from the places set apart for the 
cultivation of letters and learning to the general state 



60 THE UNITED STATES 

of letters and learning in the community, it is much 
more difficult to formulate any positive impressions. 
One feels a change in the spirit of the books pro- 
duced, and a change in the taste of the reading pub- 
lic, but one can not say exactly in what the alteration 
consists, nor how it has come, nor whether it will 
last. Literary criticism, formerly at a low ebb, seems 
to have sensibly improved, whereas in England many 
people doubt if it is as acute, as judicious, and as 
delicate as it was in the sixties. The love of poetry 
and the love of art are far more widely diffused in 
America than ever before ; one finds, for instance, a 
far greater number of good pictures in private houses 
than could have been seen thirty years ago, and the 
building up of public art galleries has occupied much 
of the thought and skill of leading citizens, as wxU 
as required the expenditure of vast sums. Great 
ardor is shown in the investigation of dry subjects, 
such as questions of local histor3\ The interest taken 
in constitutional topics and economic questions, in- 
deed in everything that belongs to the sphere of 
political science^ is as great as it is in Germany or 
France, and greater than in Britain. This interest is, 
indeed, confined to one class, which chiefly consists 
of university teachers, but it is a new and noteworthy 
phenomenon. Few people thought or wrote on these 
matters thirty years ago. 

On the other hand, it is said, and that by those 
who have the best special opportunities of knowing, 
that serious books, i. e., books other than fiction and 



THE UNITED STATES 61 

the lighter forms of belles-lettres, find no larger sale 
now, when readers are more numerous and richer, 
than they did in the seventies. No one can fail to 
observe the increasing number and popularity of the 
magazines ; and it seems likely that they are now 
more read, in proportion to books, than they used to 
be. The same thing is happening in England. It is 
a natural consequence of the low prices at which, ow- 
ing to the vast market, magazines containing good 
material and abundant illustrations can be sold. It 
may also be due to that sense of hurry which makes 
the ordinary American little disposed to sit down 
and work his way through a book. Both these fac- 
tors are more potent in the United States than they 
were ever before, or than they are in Europe. 

If in America, as well as in England, the growth 
of population has not been accompanied by a growing 
demand for books (other than fiction), let us remem- 
ber and allow for the results of another change which 
has passed upon both countries. It is a change which 
is all the more noticeable in America because it is 
there quite recent. It is the passion for looking on 
at and reading about athletic sports. The love of 
playing and watching games which require strength 
and skill is as old as mankind, and needs no expla- 
nation. But this taste in America is a thing almost 
of yesterday. It has now grown to vast proportions. 
It occupies the minds not only of the youth at the uni- 
versities, but also of their parents and the general 
public. Baseball matches and football matches excite 



62 THE UNITED STATES 

an interest greater than any other public events ex- 
cept the Presidential election. The American love of 
excitement and love of competition has seized upon 
these games, but the fashion like that of playing golf 
and that of playing bridge, seems to have come from 
England. It is a curious instance of the more inti- 
mate social relations between the two countries that 
speak the same language that fashions of this kind 
pass so quickly from one to the other and do not pass 
from either to continental Europe. There has been 
no development of the devotion to athletic sports in 
Germany or in France coincident with that which is 
so marked a feature of modern England and so novel 
a feature in America. 

No subject fixes the attention of the social philoso- 
phers in Europe who seek for light from the New 
World more than does the problem of divorce. The 
states of the Union have tried many experiments, and 
some rash experiments, in this field. The results, mo- 
mentous for America, may be instructive for the rest 
of mankind, and are being watched with curiosity by 
European sociologists. There is surely a growing re- 
action against the laxity of procedure in divorce suits, 
as well as against the freedom granted by the states 
which have gone furthest; and though little is heard 
of the proposal that Congress should receive the power 
to pass a general divorce law for the whole country, 
the suggestion that efforts should be made to induce 
the states to introduce greater uniformity, and to 
make the procedure for obtaining divorce less liable 



THE UNITED STATES 63 

to abuse, finds increasing favor. It is encouraging to 
note a stronger sense, among thinking men, of the 
evils which laxity tends to produce. 

Among minor changes which the traveler notes, he 
must not forget the growth of what may be called 
esthetic sentiment. The desire to have beauty around 
one, to adorn the house within and the grounds with- 
out, if not new, has developed apace since 1870. In 
one respect it is much more active in the United States 
than in most parts of Europe. In England there are 
none of the village improvement societies which have 
arisen in some of the Northern States, and especially 
in New England. America used to be pointed at by 
European censors as a country where utility was 
everything, and beauty nothing. No one could make 
such a reproach now. 

The sentiment which seeks to adorn cities and im- 
prove the amenity of villages is near of kin to the 
sentiment which cherishes the scenes of historical 
events and the places associated with eminent men. 
Here, too, one feels in the United States the breath 
of a new spirit. Reverence for the past and a desire 
to maintain every sort of connection with it has now 
become a strong and growing force among educated 
people. A slight but significant illustration of the 
changed attitude may be found in the disposition to 
expect university and judicial officials to wear on 
formal occasions an official dress. Thirty years ago 
no such dress was worn by any functionary in the 



64 THE UNITED STATES 

United States except the judges of the Supreme 
Court sitting at Washington. t 

I must pass over many other points in which new 
facts, disclosing new tendencies, present themselves 
to the observer's eye. One among them is the atti- 
tude of the churches toward one another, and of the 
wider channels in which religious opinion now flows. 
Another is the position of women, with the remarkable 
growth of women's clubs and societies. But I am far 
from trying to reckon up all, or even most, of the 
changes of thirty-five years. I attempt no more than 
to indicate some of the more obvious differences be- 
tween those days and the present. The subtler differ- 
ences, of which there are many, would need a fuller 
and more analytic treatment.^ 



CHAPTER V 
America's colonial policy 

LESS than a decade ago the United States was 
the most contented and in some ways the most 
provincial of the great powers, still exclusively in- 
terested in American questions, still repeating Wash- 
ington's warning against "entangling alliances," still 
regarding any participation in world politics with cu- 
rious and unconquerable timidity. 

Our colonial system commenced March 30, 1867, 
with the purchase of Alaska, though no one would 
have admitted it then. It was clearly seen, though, 
by those who opposed the acquisition and the "dan- 
gerous policy" of purchasing outlying and non-con- 
tiguous territory. 

" Few could have seen," says Sparks, " the far- 
reaching elTects of this first expansion over non- 
contiguous territory. It had crept in gently, and un- 
der the thought that it ought to be contiguous and 
would have been so if the upper Oregon country had 
not been abandoned. The word ' colony ' was not 
employed ; indeed, it would have been looked upon 
almost with horror by the American people. Yet 
the first proposition to create a territorial government 
was scarcely considered in Congress, and the military 
rule which General Rousseau set up on taking posses- 
sion was allowed to continue, the laws of the United 

5 65 



66 THE UNITED STATES 

States simply being extended over the new land, and 
a customs district created. Here was a colony in all 
senses of the word, and it was to be the beginning of 
the American colonial system." 

Sparks further says that the old colonial method 
of company monopoly was adopted in 1870. The gov- 
ernment was urged to this action by "special agents" 
sent to examine the condition of the country. In 
truth, the government was helpless. It had a colony 
on its hands without any arrangement having been 
made for its control. Self-government seemed im- 
possible. It was said that there were only one hun- 
dred and twenty-five white men in the whole country. 
The United States was forced into the very colonial 
measures which it had always condemned. But it 
made two exceptions. Former colonial policy made 
colonies profitable by taxing their inhabitants ; the 
United States exploited Alaska through its resources. 
Formerly the home government extorted profits from 
the colony ; the United States permitted corporate or- 
ganizations to do it. As a result of this first experi- 
ment in farming out a colony, the United States now 
possesses a "squeezed orange" in Alaska ; the great 
industries, like the salmon fisheries, wantonly ex- 
hausted or in the hands of enriched corporations^ as 
are also the sea otter and seal fisheries ; the natives 
starving, dying from typhoid, or destroyed through 
intemperate habits which the government is impotent 
to hinder; the colony frequently used as a refuge 
for carpetbaggers and disappointed candidates for 



THE UNITED STATES 67 

better places ; and the control of the country so dis- 
persed among the various departments of the national 
government • that no one has sufficient power or re- 
sponsibility. The past history of this first United 
States colony is best told in the story of "The Loot- 
ing of Alaska." The nation has learned its first les- 
son in colonization, but it is doubtful if ever again so 
rich a prize as Alaska falls to its share. 

During President Grant's administration there was 
some talk of annexing the island of Santo Domingo, 
its inhabitants having given consent. At another time 
it was proposed to extend a protectorate over both 
Santo Domingo and Hayti. But the industrial ex- 
pansion attendant on the reconstruction period, called 
action away from propositions, and colonization was 
made to await precipitation. 

This came with the annexation of Hawaii, in 1898, 
and the events in the Pacific Ocean that immediately 
followed. 

Since 1825 the Sandwich Islands had been head- 
quarters for American whale fishermen in the Pacific. 
Boston capital had established a trading house, im- 
ported sheep, and developed native resources. By 
1897 nearly two hundred and fifty thousand tons of 
sugar, the entire exportation, were sent to the United 
States. American missionaries had entered with 
American trade. At intervals presidential messages 
called the attention of Congress to the growing 
American investments and the necessity of closer po- 
litical relations. The native king, Kalakaua, was al- 



68 THE UNITED STATES 

lowed to remain undisturbed on his throne, but every 
effort for a number of years to secure a treaty with 
him was a signal failure, being defeated in the 
Senate, on account of the sugar interests in America. 

In 1875 the king came to the United States in 
person and a treaty was effected, giving a monopoly 
to American trade. After the death of the king, in 
1891, and the accession of his sister^ the American 
and British interests clashed. By inducing the queen 
to abdicate, the Americans were enabled to land 
marines and declare a protectorate under the United 
States. An annexation treaty followed, but the ques- 
tion became involved in politics and was not adopted. 

Then came the event in Manila Bay, and the con- 
sequent declaration of war with Spain. America saw 
the necessity of another refuge in the Pacific, and all 
prejudices were laid aside and Hawaii annexed. 

The whole affair is so recent as to be very familiar, 
but Sparks tells of it so interestingly that we venture 
to quote again : 

"The Cubans had again revolted under Spanish 
rule, and the United States had at last interfered. In 
this, as in former cases, it is impossible to separate 
disinterested motives from the selfishness of trade. 
The American people as a whole, antagonistic by in- 
heritance to Spanish rule, altnough not knowing why, 
were moved by the highest motives in thus meddling 
with a neighbor's quarrels. It can not be doubted 
that American investors^ who saw their Cuban prop- 
erty deteriorating under the appare^.tly endless war- 



THE UNITED STATES 69 

fare, and American merchants and manufacturers, who 
were deprived of the former Cuban trade^ assisted in 
bringing about intervention. In 1892, just before the 
last insurrection, the American trade with Cuba reached 
its highest point, $102,310,600; but in three years of 
irregular warfare it fell a total of $69,000,000. 

''From a larger point of view the loss of an Ameri- 
can man-of-war in a Spanish harbor was but the 
moving incident in a series. The time was ripe for 
elbowing the Spaniard from the hemisphere, as he 
had been elbowed from the continent. Only in the 
light of history can one comprehend the sudden out- 
burst of anti-Spanish rage ; the impulse which led a 
fair-minded people, noted for fair dealing, to accuse 
another nation of such a dastardly deed, and to be 
influenced into a declaration of war on the unproved 
charge. The mass of the people was not led by cu- 
pidity in entering upon this war, and even the gov- 
ernment officials in the beginning were not moved by 
sordid purposes. But no sooner had peace come, and 
the nation found itself with three new possessions on 
hand than the old land-hunger began to assert itself. 
The prospect of new fields for investment of capital, 
and new markets for manufactured products, was too 
tempting^ and American interests began to clamor in 
legislative halls. The other moving factor in gov- 
ernment, the people, was appeased by the old-time 
appeal to * patriotism.' The flag must never be 
hauled down. Also the old-time excuse, ' unless we 
take them, some one else will,' was brought out and 



70 THE UNITED STATES 

its power proved undiminished. But the chief ob- 
stacle to carrying out the first high ideals of the peo- 
ple was the one ever present in dealing with inferior 
races — their unfitness for self-government. It was 
therefore easy to argue ourselves into the belief that 
our ' duty ' and responsibility demanded a retention 
of the islands until ready for self-government. Yet 
centuries of lack of training for citizenship can not 
be overcome by years or even decades of training. It 
is a work of evolution. In the meantime, the prov- 
inces are to all intents and purposes colonies, and can 
be used for the benefit of the country holding them, 
if such sordid motives prevail. 

"The term ' colonial ' is sometimes very incor- 
rectly applied to the western territories before they 
became states of the United States. They are not 
colonies, but contiguous regions held in trust until 
they are placed on an equality with their rulers. The 
presence of Americans always promises their ultimate 
predominance. But in the expansion over outlying 
territory, beginning with Alaska, this prospect is ren- 
dered impossible for decades to come, owing to geo- 
graphical, racial, and climatic conditions. They are 
true colonies, although this word will be used very 
sparingly at first. 

"As a result of this territorial expansion and un- 
der these complications, the United States finds it- 
self plunged still deeper into a colonial system. It 
suddenly becomes aware of the new surroundings into 
which it has been slowly drifting for a quarter of a 



THE UNITED STATES 71 

century. It finds that a new world does not make 
new inhabitants; that the impulses which moved men 
in the past are still powerful ; that the weak must con- 
tinue to give way to the strong. 

"This new awakening must be a blow to those 
who supposed that the isolation which marked the 
youth of the United States could continue; that this 
exclusion during the apprenticeship meant a 'mani- 
fest destiny' varying from that of other peoples ; that 
we were intended by some special dispensation of 
Providence to avoid the cupidity, the conquests, the 
accompanying cruelties of the onward march of that 
relative thing we call civilization. Having reached 
our majority, we see our 'plain duty' to take part in 
the world's counsels simply because men have hith- 
erto done so. To avoid it would mean selfishness, 
egotism, and possibly disintegration. We can not 
escape it because we have no desire to escape it. We 
shall cooperate in the common duty of imposing upon 
others a civilization bearing the only absolute and 
immutable criterion of right — its survival over oth- 
ers. And civilization will be found kind to that gene- 
ration of inferiors which shall eventually survive^ al- 
though many intervening ones must perish. To har- 
ness the savage living in the stone age to the car of 
civilization in the steam age was death to the savage ; 
but it meant a higher life for those of his posterity 
who survived." 

Our colonies as we number them now are Alaska, 
Hawaii, Philippines, Porto Rico and Cuba, with a 



72 THE UNITED STATES 

total area of 688,922 square miles, and a population 
of 10,611,696. The territory nearly doubles that of 
the original thirteen states; the population is greater 
than that of the whole United States in 1820. While 
Cuba is quasi-Republic, it is^ in reality, dependent 
upon the United States and will doubtless remain so 
for some time. It is predicted that she will eventu- 
ally be, from her own desire, one of the annexed ter- 
ritories. 

Our most consequential colonial possession, the 
Philippines, makes a most satisfactory showing. It 
is the greatest in area and population, and the natives 
are rapidly reaching civilization. 

Courts are organized in all the provinces, and the 
native and American judges constitute an able bench. 
The supreme court is as good and generally as effi- 
cient as that of any of the states, and commands as 
much respect. The administrative offices are filled 
by men thoroughly devoted to their work and loyal 
to the production of the best results. 

Agricultural conditions are sometimes discouraging 
on account of the destructive ravages of locusts. But 
modern farms are being established and the most 
improved methods of cultivating the soil are being 
taught. The analysis of soils is an important branch 
of the work. Every effort is being made to encour- 
age, help, and stimulate the productive capacity of 
the people. The production of rice, hemp, tobacco, 
sugar, corn^ copra, and other crops can be enormously 
increased. An American syndicate has a fifty years' 



THE UNITED STATES 73 

franchise for street-railway and electric lighting in 
Manila. New railroads are being built into the in- 
terior^ opening up much more rich territory. The 
building of roads, improvement of harbors, building of 
public buildings, and the construction and equipping 
of fleets keep our new possession busy. 

A school system has been established throughout 
the islands V and a thousand American teachers are 
devoting themselves to teaching English to the na- 
tives, and instructing the native teachers in modern 
methods of teaching. These American teachers are 
greatly appreciated by the natives, who are acquiring 
a knowledge of the English language with remarka- 
ble facility. 

There is no political disturbance in the islands, 
save an occasional agitation in the Moro country and 
the invasions of landrones, — bands of robbers, — and 
these are becoming less frequent. Altogether, condi- 
tions are very favorable. 

Americans have had now some eight years' expe- 
rience in the larger imperialism. Their facility has 
proved to be great, but still greater is their conserva- 
tism. They have ceased to hold aloof from interna- 
tional politics ; they are in a tentative way themselves 
engaging in them, but, as yet, only as an interesting 
diversion rather than the pursuance of a pohcy on 
the success of which they are prepared to hazard all. 
The questions that still arouse them are American 
questions.^ 



CHAPTER VI 

RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AND FORCE OF 
PUBLIC OPINION 

IN studying the history of our country there is a 
tendency, on the part of the casual student, to shun 
such topics as poHtical parties and their history. 
Perhaps this obtains because the idea is prevalent 
that such subjects are dry and uninteresting, and re- 
quire, at best, a vast amount of studious application. 
While this may be true in a measure, it is quite 
necessary that one be able to grasp some of the 
salient points in the formation of our political par- 
ties in order to comprehend the trend of present-day 
history. 

Beginning with the Constitutional Convention of 
1787, at Philadelphia, that met to draft the Consti- 
tution of the United States, party spirit manifested 
itself in the attendant debates and discussions. 

One of the most vexing points in the Constitution 
to determine was that of maintaining the freedom of 
the individual and independence in legislation with- 
out subordinating the states. When the Constitu- 
tion was finally ratified and George Washington made 
president, the tendencies either for or against the 
ratification were still apparent through their repre- 
sentatives in House, Senate, and Cabinet. It was 
then that the supporters of a central national author- 
ity became known as Federalists. Alexander Ham- 

74 



THE UNITED STATES 75 

ilton, Secretary of the Treasury, advocated vesting 
the central federal authority with large powers, 
while Jefferson, the Secretary of State, would con- 
fine its action to foreign affairs alone. Even yet 
" state sovereignty " bobs up occasionally like a ghost 
that will not down. 

Very early in governmental history there occurred 
an event that consolidated the opponents of the Fed- 
eralists into an independent party. This was the cre- 
ation of the French Republic and its declaration of 
war against England. The Federalists counseled 
neutrality, but *'the party of Jefferson," says Hon. 
James Bryce in his "American Commonwealth," 
"were pervaded by sympathy with French ideas, were 
hostile to England, whose attitude continued to be 
discourteous, and sought to restrict the interference 
of the central government with the states, and to 
allow the fullest play to sentiment of state independ- 
ence." The new party adopted the name of Repub- 
licans or Democratic Republicans, and in its princi- 
ples originated the present Democrat party. 

In tracing the progress of the two parties it will 
be seen that, because of the weakness of the old Con- 
federation, the people were inclined to cling to a 
strong central power. Under the administration of 
John Adams, however^ the Federalists are said to have 
made some grave errors, and the election of 1800 
resulted in their defeat. In 1804 their strongest sup- 
porter, Alexander Hamilton, died, and the party 
never recovered from its overthrow. 



76 THE UNITED STATES 

'' The disappearance of the Federal party," says 
Bryce, "between 1815 and 1820 left the Republicans 
master of the field. But in the United States if old 
parties vanish, nature quickly produces new ones. 
Sectional division soon arose among the men who 
joined in electing Monroe in 1820, and under the in- 
fluence of personal hostility of Henry Clay and An- 
drew Jackson, two great parties were again formed 
(about 1830), which some few years later absorbed 
the minor groups. One of these two parties carried 
on, under the name of Democrats, the dogmas and 
traditions of the Jeffersonian' Republicans. It was 
the defender of states' rights and of a restrictive con- 
struction of the Constitution; it leant mainly on the 
South and farming classes generally, and it was 
therefore inclined to free trade. The other section, 
which called itself at first the National Republican, 
ultimately the Whig party^ represented many of the 
views of the former Federalists, such as their advo- 
cacy of a tariff for the protection of manufactures, 
and of the expenditure of public money on internal 
improvements. It was willing to increase the army 
and navy, and like the Federalists found its chief, 
though by no means its sole^ support in the com- 
mercial and manufacturing parts of the country, that 
is to say, in New England and the Middle States." 

Just at this time (1819) came up the question of 
admitting Missouri into the Unio i as a slave state. 
The Northerners voted solidly against it, the Soutli- 
erners for it. The following year, however, a com- 



THE UNITED STATES 11 

promise was adopted, and Missouri was admitted 
with the privilege of slavery. An act was passed 
prohibiting slavery in the future north of latitude 
36° 30'. 

After 1840 the cause of abolition commenced to 
gain strength, and by 1850 had become the all-ab- 
sorbing question of the day. The line was drawn 
closely between the North and the South, and in 1852 
the Democratic party had become almost wholly iden- 
tified with the South in favor of slavery^ and it was 
then that northern Democrats were given the oppro- 
brious name, ''copperheads." 

Bryce cites the singularity of the fact that just 
at this time Henry Clay and Daniel Webster,, the ora- 
tors of the Whig party^ died, followed two years 
later by the death of Calhoun. 

Then, there were a number of minor parties 
wasting their forces, including the '' Know-noth- 
ings," the '' Free Soilers," and the '' Liberty " party. 
After the declaration of the Supreme Court, in the 
Dred Scott case, that Congress had no power to for- 
bid slavery anywhere in the United States, the storm- 
cloud burst in all its fury. The Democrats in 1860 
could not agree on a presidential candidate ; the three 
minor parties joined the Whigs under the name of 
Republicans and elected Abraham Lincoln president. 
Thus we see the Republican party at its very begin- 
ning winning a victory over the Supreme Court, de- 
claring that Congress had a right to forbid slavery, 
and defending the Union. Then came the second great 



78 THE UNITED STATES 

crisis in the history of the United States, the Civil 
War. 

Since then parties have come and gone, some of 
them leaving little or no imprint upon political his- 
tory. It has remained for the two great parties, Re- 
publican and Democratic, to survive unscathed for 
nearly half a century,, each upholding certain indi- 
vidual issues, sometimes one victorious and some- 
times the other. The colonial policy apparent, though 
not authoritatively declared, presages another crisis 
in political history. 

PUBLIC OPINION AS A FACTOR 

One does not have to be particularly acute to 
perceive that public opinion has much to do with the 
formation of new political parties and the final set- 
tlement of all questions of vital concern to the na- 
tion. We have seen its action in the slavery ques- 
tion, civil service reform, revision of the tariff, terri- 
torial expansion ; and we are having a fair example of 
it to-day in numerous live questions, such as capital 
and labor, and public ownership — and public opinion 
will settle them. 

It will be interesting to look for a moment at 
public opinion in America as analyzed by the keen 
insight of James Bryce. He says: 

" In America, opinion is not made but grows. 
Of course, it must begin somewhere ; but it is often 
hard to say where or how. As there are in the coun- 
try a vast number of minds similar in their knowledge, 
beliefs, and attitude, with few exceptionally power- 



THE UNITED STATES 79 

fill minds applying themselves to politics, it is natu- 
ral that the same idea should often occur to several 
or many persons at the same time, that each event 
as it occurs should produce the same impression and 
evoke the same comments over a wide area. When 
everybody desires to agree with the majority, and 
values such accord more highly than the credit of 
originality, this tendency is all the stronger. An idea 
once launched, or a view on some current question 
propounded, flies everywhere on the wings of a press 
eager for novelties. Publicity is the easiest thing in 
the world to obtain ; but as it is attainable by all na- 
tions, phrases, and projects, wise and foolish alike, 
the struggle for existence— that is to say, for public 
attention — is severe." 

There is something of a hit at the inferiority of 
our method of procedure in the above paragraph, but 
there is no question but that Americans need just 
now to see themselves as others see them, and if we 
invite criticism, we should do so with the assurance 
that we have an epidermis thick enough to stand the 
pressure. 

''Here as well as everywhere else," says Mr. Bryce, 
"some one person or group must make a beginning, 
but, whereas in Europe men can generally note who 
does make the beginning, in America a view often 
seems to arise spontaneously, and to be the work of 
many rather than of few. The individual counts for 
less, the mass counts for more. In propagating a 
doctrine not hitherto advanced by any party, the 
methods used are similar to those of the old country. 
A central society is formed, branch societies spring 
up over the country, a journal is started, and if the 



80 THE UNITED STATES 

movement thrives^ an annual convention of its sup- 
porters is held, at which speeches are made and reso- 
lutions adopted." 

Mr. Bryce says that when opinion is organized 
for the formation of a particular view or proposition, 
it has in the United States three courses open to it: 

" The first is to capture one or the other of the 
great parties, i. e., to persuade or frighten that party 
into adopting this view as part of its programme, or, 
to use the technical term, making it a plank of the 
platform, in which case the party candidates will be 
bound to support it. This is the most effective course, 
but the most difficult; for a party is sure to have 
something to lose as well as to gain by embracing a 
new dogma. 

" The second course is for the men who hold the 
particular view to declare themselves a new party, 
put forward their own programme, run their own 
candidates. Besides being costly and troublesome, 
this course would be thought ridiculous when the 
view or proposition is not one of first-rate importance, 
which has already obtained wide support. Where, 
however, it is applicable it is worth taking, even 
when the candidates can n^ be carried, for it serves 
as an advertisement, and it alarms the old party, 
from which it withdraws voting strength. 

" The third is to cast the voting weight of the 
organized promoters of the doctrine or view in ques- 
tion into the scale of whichever party shows the great- 
est friendliness, or seems most open to conversion. 



THE UNITED STATES 81 

As in many states the regular parties are pretty evenly 
balanced, even a comparatively weak body of opinion 
may decide the result. Such a body does not neces- 
sarily forward its own view, for the candidates whom 
its vote carries are nowise pledged to its programme. 
But it has made itself felt^ shown itself a power to 
be reckoned with, improved its chances of capturing 
one or other of the regular parties, or of running 
candidates of its own on some future occasion. 

" So far we have been considering the case of per- 
sons advocating some specific opinion or scheme. As 
respects the ordinary conduct of business by officials 
and legislators, the fear of popular displeasure to 
manifest itself at the next election is, of course, the 
most powerful of restraining influences. Under a 
system of balanced authorities, such fear helps to 
prevent or remove deadlocks as well as the abuse of 
power by any one authority. A president (or state 
governor) who has vetoed bills passed by Congress 
(or his state legislature) is emboldened to go on do- 
ing so when he finds public opinion on his side; and 
Congress (or the state legislature) will hesitate, 
though the requisite majority may be forthcoming, 
to pass these bills over the veto. A majority in the 
House of Representatives, or in a state legislative 
body, which has abused the power of closing debate 
by the ' previous question ' rule, may be frightened 
by expressions of popular disapproval from repeating 
the offense. When the two branches of a legislature 
differ, and a valuable bill has failed, or when there 

6 



82 THE UNITED STATES 

has been vexatious filibustering, public opinion fixes 
the blame on the party responsible for the loss of 
good measures or public time, and may punish it at 
the next election. Mischief is checked in America 
more frequently than anywhere else by the fear of ex- 
posure, or by newspaper criticisms on the first stage 
of a bad scheme. And,, of course, the frequency of 
elections has the merit of bringing the prospect of 
punishment nearer." 

In the above paragraphs the action of public 
opinion is shown, but Mr. Bryce does not leave -a 
subject until he has treated it from all points of view. 
And so we are able to quote some of the failures and 
successes of public opinion as incident to its action. 

" Public opinion," says Mr. Bryce, " is slow and 
clumsy in grappling with large practical problems. 
It looks at them, talks incessantly about them, com- 
plains of Congress for not solving them, is distressed 
that they do not solve themselves. But they remain 
unsolved. Vital decisions have usually hung fire 
longer than they would have been likely to do in 
European countries. The War of 1812 seemed on 
the point of breaking out over and over again before 
it came at last. The absorption of Texas was a ques- 
tion of many years. The extension of slavery ques- 
tion came before the nation in 1819; after 1840 it 
was the chief source of trouble ; year by year it grew 
more menacing; year by year the nation was seen to 
be drifting toward the breakers. Everybody felt that 
something must be done. But it was the function of 



THE UNITED STATES 83 

no one authority in particular to discover a rem- 
edy, as it would have been the function of a cabinet 
in Europe. I do not say the sword might not in any 
case have been invoked, for the temperature of 
Southern feeling had been steadily rising to war point. 
But the history of 1840-60 leaves an impression of the 
dangers which may result from fettering the consti- 
tutional organs of government, and trusting to public 
sentiment to bring things right." 

]\Ir. Bryce further asks " how far American opin- 
ion succeeds in the simpler duty, which opinion must 
discharge in all countries, of supervising the conduct 
of business, and judging the current legislative work 
which Congress and other legislatures turn out. 

" Here again the question turns not so much on 
the excellence of public opinion as on the adequacy 
of the constitutional machinery provided for its ac- 
tion. That supervision and criticism may be effect- 
ive, it must be easy to fix on particular persons the 
praise for work well done, the blame for work neg- 
lected or ill-performed. Experience shows that good 
men are the better for a sense of their responsibility 
and ordinary men useless without it. The American 
plan of dividing powers makes it hard to fix respon- 
sibility. The executive can usually allege that it had 
not received from the legislature the authority nec- 
essary to enable it to grapple with a difficulty ; while 
in the legislature there is no one person or group of 
persons on whom the blame due for that refusal or 
omission can be laid. A victim is wanted, who, for 



84 THE UNITED STATES 

the sake of the example to others, ought to be found 
and punished, either by law or by general censure. 
But perhaps he can not be found, because out of sev- 
eral persons or bodies who have been concerned, it is 
hard to apportion guilt and award the penalty. The 
strong point of the American system, the dominant 
fact of the situation, is the healthiness of public opin- 
ion, and the control which it exerts. As Abraham 
Lincoln said in his famous contest with Douglas, 
*With public sentiment on its side, everything succeeds ; 
with public sentiment against it, nothing succeeds.' 
"The conscience and common sense of the nation 
as a whole keep down the evils which have crept into 
the working of the Constitution, and may in time ex- 
tinguish them. Public opinion is a sort of atmos- 
phere, fresh, keen, and full of sunlight, like that of 
the American cities, and this sunlight kills many of 
those noxious germs which are hatched where poli- 
ticians congregate. That which, varying a once- 
famous phrase, we may call the genius of universal 
publicity, has some disagreeable results, but the 
wholesome ones are greater and more numerous. 
Selfishness, injustice, cruelty, tricks, and jobs of all 
sorts shun the light ; to expose them is to defeat 
them. No serious evils, no rankling sore in the body 
politic can remain long concealed, and when dis- 
closed, it is half destroyed. So long as the opinion 
of a nation is sound, the main lines of its policy can 
not go far wrong, whatever waste of time and money 
may be incurred in carrying them out." ^ 



CHAPTER VII 

PAST AND FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES 
SUPREME COURT 

WE can not arrive at an intelligent understand- 
ing of the workings of the Supreme Court 
and its present position in the machinery of the na- 
tional government in a better way than to survey its 
early history. 

Among the distinguished statesmen identified with 
the early history of the United States, Richard 
Henry Lee, of Virginia, holds a place apart. A 
member of the Continental Congress in 1774, he wrote 
the memorable appeal to the people of British Amer- 
ica, probably the address to the king, and certainly the 
address to the people of Great Britain — all state pa- 
pers of the first importance. In 1776 he moved the 
resolutions embodying the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, became one of the signers of that immortal 
document, served with great distinction in both houses 
of Congress, and rounded out his remarkable career 
by introducing the bill which created the Supreme 
Court of the United States. 

Although the bill was introduced by Mr. Lee, 
credit must be given to Oliver Ellsworth, of Con- 
necticut, chairman of the committee assigned the duty 
of framing judicial legislation for the Union, for its 
authorship. The original draft of the Senate bill, 

85 



86 THE UNITED STATES 

now in the government archives, is in his handwriting, 
but it is probable poHtical expediency suggested Lee's 
intervention, and his agency would seem to have been 
justified by the result, for the proposed act was 
promptly ratified by both houses of Congress, and 
being signed by Washington became a law Sept. 24, 
1789. 

There is evidence that some members of the First 
Congress fully realized the vast importance and pos- 
sibilities of the institution they had established, but 
it is probable that the majority little dreamed of the 
tremendous influence it was destined to exert upon 
ihe history of the nation. The earliest appointees to 
the bench had no reason to suspect the future glory 
of their court as they traveled the wide circuits 
throughout the thirteen states over bad roads in all 
sorts of weather, living, as one of them expressed 
it, *'the life of postboys/' seeking business but literally 
finding none. 

Even as late as 1801 there were only ten cases 
on the docket of the court, and during the next five 
years its calendars averaged less than twenty-five 
cases a year. It was not until 1845-50 that the an- 
nual record rose to seventy cases. From that time 
forward the business grew by leaps and bounds, until 
in 1890 there were twenty-five hundred actions de- 
manding attention, and no hearing could be had for 
three or four years after a case had been placed upon 
the calendar. Even to-day^ when there are inter- 
mediary courts to relieve the pressure on the main 



THE UNITED STATES 87 

body and every effort has been made to restrict its 
business, there is more business each year than can 
possibly be disposed of. 

The extent of power held by the Supreme Court 
was first made manifest in a case of very little im- 
portance, known as the case of Marbury against 
Madison. In this case Chief Justice Marshall initi- 
ated the doctrine that the Supreme Court might and 
would invalidate any law which in its judgment vio- 
lated the provisions of the United States Constitution. 

This announcement may well have astonished and 
dismayed Jefferson and the Congress, for, carried to 
its legitimate conclusion, it virtually stripped them of 
authority. The Presidential veto, which could be 
overridden by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, 
had never been resorted to by either Adams or Jef- 
ferson, and only twice by Washington. But com- 
pared with the powers claimed by Marshall this lim- 
ited right of veto was an insignificant prerogative. 
If b,y its mere fiat the federal court could annul leg- 
islation adopted by the representatives of the people, 
they no longer held the reins of government. This, 
in the opinion of Jefferson and his followers, was the 
end of free institutions. Better commit all legisla- 
tion to the judiciary in the first place, they argued, 
than go through the empty form of enacting measures 
which the bench could set aside. 

Despite Jefferson's incredulity, however, and in the 
face of his unceasing opposition, Marshall's novel 
theory of government steadily gained support, and 



88 THE UNITED STATES 

during his long term of four and thirty years the 
Chief Justice did much to demonstrate that his theory 
was not only good law but sound public policy. In- 
deed, it is largely through Marshall's personal influ- 
ence and efforts that the court has become a recog- 
nized and almost a determining factor in our political 
system — supreme in fact as well as in name — the one 
virtually unchangeable authority in the land. 

But although the court has demonstrated its util- 
ity and, on the whole, justified the confidence reposed 
in it by successive generations, the very fact that it 
possesses such immense powers is in itself disturbing, 
and at every national crisis grave doubts arise con- 
cerning this unprecedented institution. There is much 
in its long and honorable history to mitigate this pe- 
riodical anxiety, but perhaps the most reassuring cir- 
cumstance is the non-partisan character of the bench. 
Although appointed by the Executive from the ranks 
of his own political party, the judges have, with very 
few exceptions, held aloof from political activity, and 
their decisions have generally been. free of party bias. 
Moreover, every section of the country has been rep- 
resented at one time or another upon the bench, and 
no group of states or political organization has ever 
monopolized it. Of course, in one aspect, the court 
has never been and never can be free of politics, for 
questions involving party policies are constantly com- 
ing before it. From this point of view the long strug- 
gle between Marshall and Jefferson was political, but 
the welding of the states into the nation and the 



i THE UNITED STATES 89 

quickening of the Constitution which were the im- 
mediate results of that contest can not rightly be re- 
garded as the work of any political party. 

During the past forty years the majority of the 
court has been composed of men politically affiliated 
with the dominant party in the House and Senate, 
and every law which they have declared unconstitu- 
tional has been the work of political friends. Nor is 
this a condition of affairs peculiar to the Republican 
party. In 1894, the income tax, supported by the 
Democratic party and administration, was annulled, 
not by political opponents, but by the votes of Demo- 
cratic judges, and many other instances of a similar 
nature could be cited to prove how little subservient 
the bench has been to the dictates of the party in 
power. Almost every move that has been made 
against the court by Congress has been directed, not 
to divorcing it from politics, but rather to control- 
ling its decisions. To this end in 1801 the number of 
judges was increased from six to ten, and in 1866 it 
was reduced to seven, avowedly for the purpose of 
preventing Andrew Johnson from filling the vacan- 
cies which had occurred. Again in 1869 two mem- 
bers were added to the bench to insure the safety of 
the Legal Tender Act, and other changes which were 
advocated and debated at that time reveal the fact 
that its independence has been the court's greatest 
offense in the eyes of politicians. 

But another and very much graver argument has 
been formulated against this ancient and honorable 



90 THE UNITED STATES 

tribunal by the judges themselves. During recent 
years dissenting opinions have been recorded with 
almost every decision of importance, and in many in- 
stances the vote has invited the inquiry whether a 
house so divided against itself can long endure. 

In the income tax case, a previous decision of the 
court, made upon substantially the same facts many 
years before, warranted the conclusion that the law 
would be upheld^ but after two elaborate hearings 
five judges declared the act unconstitutional and 
four pronounced it valid, the odd vote annulling the 
legislation. In other words, the opinion of one man 
overturned the deliberate judgment of the two houses 
of Congress which had been approved by the Presi- 
dent and generally sanctioned by the people. If this 
had merely happened once or twice, it would occa- 
sion little comment, but it has occurred again and 
again until unanimous opinions are the exception 
rather than the rule. Numerous cases might be cited 
to confirm this. This is not extraordinary that judges 
should differ among themselves on close questions of 
law, but this fact affords another reason for doubt- 
ing whether a vote of five to four should be permit- 
ted to invalidate legislation. 

The danger of a law being annulled by a minority 
vote was recognized as long ago as 1868, and in that 
year a. bill was passed by the House providing that 
six judges should be necessary for a quorum and a 
two-thirds majority required for any decision invali- 
dating an act of Congress. The measure failed in 



THE UNITED STATES 91 

the Senate, however, and has never been revived. 
In 1869 an amendment to the Constitution was pro- 
posed by which the judges of the Supreme Court 
were declared inehgible for all other offices, their 
term limited to twenty years, and their retirement 
rendered compulsory at the age of seventy, with a 
pension for life. This suggestion did not meet with 
approval and never came to a vote. The growing 
tendency of the judges to disagree among themselves 
has, however, revived interest in some of the plans 
for reorganization discussed in the Reconstruction 
days. 

Although there are no indications that the court 
will soon be reorganized upon any of the suggested 
lines, it is almost certain that the bench will be prac- 
tically remanned before many years are past. Two 
of the present judges are over seventy years of age, 
and three more are nearing seventy, which in many 
states marks the limit of judicial service. Already 
one of the youngest of these elderly justices has sig- 
nified his intention to retire, and as the average serv- 
ice of the members of this court has not exceeded 
sixteen years, there is a good reason to suppose that 
President Roosevelt may have to assume the high 
responsibility of appointing the majority of the bench 
before his time expires. 

Not all the justices of the Supreme Court have 
been jurists of the highest caliber, but Jay, Mar- 
shall, Storey, Taney, Curtis, Chase, Davis and many 
others have displayed judicial talents of rare quality, 



92 THE UNITED STATES 

and the average legal ability of the entire bench has 
been comparatively high. The men who have been 
selected for service have usually been chosen when 
in the prime of life. Storey, who began his judicial 
career at thirty-two, was the youngest recipient of 
the honor, and Hunt, nominated in his sixty-second 
year, was the oldest. These facts and the traditions 
which have generally developed have tended to main- 
tain a virile and dignified body, and whether or not 
any radical reorganization of the court will be seri- 
ously attempted during the coming years depends 
very largely upon its future composition. If the new 
judges are broad-minded, liberal^ far-sighted men, 
conservative in the best sense of the word, but suf- 
ficiently courageous to disregard the letter of the law 
when occasion requires, there is no reason to antici- 
pate any substantial change in the judicial system. 
If, on the other hand, they fail to keep abreast of 
the times or in touch with its spirit, there is every 
probability that the institution will not survive. 

It must be apparent to every thoughtful and in- 
telligent observer that the court is entering upon a 
new era in its history, and that before many years 
novel and perplexing questions involving the eco- 
nomic and social future of the country will demand 
the best thought of an exceptional bench. The na- 
ture of the problems to be presented will require 
something more than erudition for their satisfactory 
solution. Statesmanship of the highest order, and 
only men capable of directing the changing order and 



THE UNITED STATES 93 

thoroughly alive to its meaning will prove equal to 
the emergency. It is encouraging that already the 
members of the court are awake to the impending 
crisis. Only a short time ago one of the associate 
justices in an instructive essay admitted that the court 
would, within a short time, be tested as it never has 
been in its history, and in the course of his remarks 
he enumerated four classes of new business which 
would probably be increasingly impressed upon ju- 
dicial notice. First in importance he mentioned the 
cases that would grow out of the relations of capital 
and labor; second, those springing from the manifest 
effort to increase and concentrate the powers of the 
nation and lessen those of the states; third, those 
arising from the acquisition of foreign territories, 
and fourth, those involved in the closer relations 
which the nation must inevitably bear to other coun- 
tries by reason of those new possessions and expan- 
sion of trade. 

The period during which Chief Justice Marshall 
held sway has been officially referred to as *'the 
golden age of the Supreme Court," but in point of 
opportunity and utility all indications are that the 
golden age lies in the future rather than in the past 
history of this mighty tribunal. No institution, po- 
litical or social, can long survive upon traditions, and 
coming events promise unequaled opportunities for 
qualified jurists to create new traditions for the court 
and achieve unique distinction for themselves in the 
history of the country. 



94 THE UNITED STATES 

The problems destined to confront the bench and 
the* immense responsibihties involved in their solu- 
tion will require high-minded and broad-minded 
statesmen, rather than profound lawyers. The time 
has passed when library browsers can enhance ju- 
dicial credit with abstruse learning, nor can techni- 
cal jurists any longer point the path of safety with 
split hairs. The Titanic movement which is already 
beginning to transform the industrial and social world 
and whose impulse is everywhere perceptible, demands 
the guidance of strong, even-tempered, courageous 
men of good red blood and sound common sense — 
men who know the country, understand its people, 
and believe in the destiny of the nation. Despite the 
financial sacrifice which service upon this great bench 
entails, there is little doubt that able and patriotic 
judges can be found capable of answering new ques- 
tions with wisdom and courage and improving the 
splendid opportunities which lie before them. Indeed, 
such men must be found if this historic institution 
is to escape the experiment of drastic reorganization.^ 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE IMMIGRATION QUESTION 
I 

QINCE 1820, when the statistics of the subject be- 
^ gan to be preserved, an aggregate of something 
over 24,000,000 has been added to our population 
through immigration. Looking back over the wave 
Hne which depicts the successive risings and faUings 
of the ahen influx during these eighty-seven years, 
one will be struck not only by its extremely jagged 
and irregular character but also by the periodicity 
of the undulations it records. He will observe that 
the years 1854, 1873, 1882, and 1892 stand as culmi- 
nating points, from which the line dips in either di- 
rection into periods of depression. In other words, 
with the obvious omission of the Civil War decade, 
each ten years of the last half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury^ roughly speaking, witnessed a rapid and for- 
midable swell of the immigrant stream^ followed by 
almost, if not quite, as pronounced a subsidence. 

On this principle, we should have reached another 
maximum about 1902 or 1903, and should now be 
sinking back by long leaps toward the lower level. 
We reached the maximum promptly at the scheduled 
time ; but, instead of passing over it and downward, 
we have continued to mount higher and higher ever 
since. With a slight interruption in 1904^ for the tenth 

95 



96 THE UNITED STATES 

time straight each year's immigration has considerably 
surpassed in numbers that of the preceding year. In 
1903, a point was reached which was the highest yet 
attained in our histor}^ In 1905, the miUion mark 
was passed and the prophets themselves stood amazed. 
And during the past year the number has shot up- 
ward until already a big start has been made toward 
the two-million goal, with every indication that the 
present year will carry us at least a quarter of the 
remaining distance to it. Recurring to this wave line, 
one will find the 1906 influx of aliens towering like 
a Himalaya in the midst of humble foothills. But it, 
in turn, promises to be dwarfed within a twelvemonth. 
It is not easy to conceive what our immigration 
has really come to be. The figures are too stupen- 
dous to be grasped by the mind. Let one who has sat 
in the magnificent stadium at Cambridge, as one of 
40,000 spectators at a Harvard- Yale football gam.e, 
reflect that if the immigrants entering our ports dur- 
ing the fiscal year 1906 were brought together, they 
would make a throng twenty-five and a half times 
as large as that which crowds every available foot of 
space around the great oval. Let him consider that 
the number admitted in this twelvemonth from Nor- 
way and Sweden alone would more than fill the sta- 
dium; that the number from Germany would do the 
same; that the influx from Great Britain would fill 
it two and a half times; that from Russia would fill 
it more than five times; that from Austria-Hungary 
would fill it more than six times; and the contribu- 



THE UNITED STATES 97 

tions from Italy would do it seven times, with peo- 
ple to spare. Let him further call to mind that, on 
the average, the stadium could be packed with the 
aliens who are landed at Ellis Island, New York, every 
seventeen days throughout the entire year — indeed, 
with those who are landed in less than a week at 
certain busier portions of the year. 

Then let him consider that the total number of 
immigrants admitted in 1906 would nearly serve to 
populate either the city of Philadelphia, or the cities 
of Boston and Baltimore combined; that, in fact, it 
would people all Maryland, or all Nebraska, or the 
whole region occupied by Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, 
Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. These six states 
and territories have an aggregate area of 649,320 
square miles, which is nearly 18 per cent of the total 
area of the United States. It is a rather startling fact 
to face that this very considerable proportion of the 
country's area has an aggregate population no larger 
than the ordinary course of immigration has brought 
to us in a single twelvemonth. 

One may or may not take alarm at the mere mat- 
ter of numbers. The adding of a round million of 
foreign-born to our population every year is not nec- 
essarily ruinous to the essential interests of the nation 
— even to the ultimate survival of the American as a 
type of cultivated human being. The country and 
its resources are enormous. Its population is rela- 
tively small. There is still an abundance of room — 
for the right sort of people. The discouraging fact 



98 THE UNITED STATES 

which can not be evaded, however, is that along with 
the increase in vokime of immigration has gone a 
hardly less pronounced falling off in quality. There 
is no need to argue the question whether one race of 
people is inherently better or more capable than an- 
other. Probably in the long run the conclusion would 
be that, the habit of a thousand generations of one's 
ancestors being hard to overcome, we still allow mere 
dift'erences of race to shape our judgments far more 
than is really justifiable. But, as practical affairs go, 
everybody understands that some peoples are more 
industrious than others ; that some are more ambitious 
than others ; that some assimilate with their neigh- 
bors and perpetuate the better qualities of both, while 
others herd together and accentuate their own defi- 
ciencies. In other words, men springing from cer- 
tain stocks are eminently more desirable as immi- 
grants than are their cousins in whose veins flows a 
different blood. 

It is a commonplace that since about 1885 there 
has been a profound change in the predominant ele- 
ments of our immigrant population. The cardinal 
fact is the shifting of the preponderance from the 
Celtic and Teutonic peoples of the north and west of 
Europe to the Iberian and Slavic stocks of the south 
and east. The hope which those best acquainted with 
the situation have cherished for years that the scale 
will turn in favor of the Teutonic, and therefore of 
the more acceptable, type of immigrant, has thus far 
completely failed of realization. Without exception, 



THE UNITED STATES 99 

England, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and 
Scotland, which until a generation ago supplied by 
far the larger part of our foreign population, con- 
tributed fewer immigrants in 1906 than in 1905, while 
the four whose gains were largest were Italy, Russia, 
Greece, and Turkey. Austria-Hungary alone of 
southern and eastern European countries exhibited a 
decrease, and there is no reason for regarding this ap- 
parent cause for rejoicing as other than an isolated 
and more or less accidental phenomenon quite devoid 
of significance. Of every 100 aliens landed at our 
ports in 1906, Z7 were Slavic, 28 were Iberic, 19 
were Teutonic, and 11 were Celtic; that is, 65 came 
from southern and eastern Europe and Asia Minor, 
but only 30 from the countries to the north and west. 
Obviously we, as a predominantly Teutonic people, 
are undertaking a problem of assimilation which 
dv/arfs all such problems with which our fathers and 
grandfathers were called upon to deal. 

It w^ould be a hitherto unparalleled problem even 
if our Slavic and Italian and Hebrew newcomers 
represented the solid citizenship of the countries from 
which they spring, as did the English and German 
immigrants of forty years ago. But, by common 
agreement, they do not. Our immigrants to-day are 
not only of widely different racial antecedents, but 
they are distinctly inferior to those of earlier times in 
the fundamental qualities of character and economic 
status. In the last analysis, the basis of judgment in 
the matter must be the equipment, material and oth- 

LOFC. 



100 THE UNITED STATES 

erwise, which the mass of aHens bring for taking up 
life under American conditions and growing with 
fair faciUty into self-reHant and productive citizens. 
To be quite desirable, the immigrant must have suf- 
ficient money to enable him to live independently until 
he finds employment and has an income upon which 
to rely for support ; he must be sturdy and healthy 
in body, capable of doing as much hard work as his 
station is apt to involve; he must be of fair intelli- 
gence — not necessarily ''educated," perhaps not even 
able to read or write, but at least possessing a mind 
susceptible of some discrimination and sanity of judg- 
ment. 

Some of these qualities are difficult to measure 
and it would be foolish to attempt to affirm just what 
proportion of our immigrants to-day possess any or 
all of them, and in what degree. Financial equipment 
is a tangible thing, however, and as that is a matter 
carefully inquired into by the inspectors at our ports, 
we have some information regarding it which is 
worth while. The total amount of money shown by 
the aliens admitted to the country in 1906 was 
$25,109,413, which looks like a big sum until one 
figures out the average when distributed among more 
than a million people. As a matter of fact, the record 
was not so good as in the preceding year, when 
75,000 fewer immigrants brought nearly $50,000 more 
money. Moreover, the resources of this sort were 
very unevenly distributed. The 45,079 English 
brought an aggregate of $2,610,439, while three and 



THE UNITED STATES 101 

one-half times as many Jews brought only $2,362,125. 
The 144,954 Germans and Scandinavians brought 
$5,091,594, while 263,655 southern Italians and Greeks 
brought but $4,183,398. The average Jew or Italian 
or Greek who lands at the Battery with his fifteen 
dollars has obviously not a very long lease of existence 
unless he finds ready employment, or is supported by 
friends, or falls back upon public charity. 

Another fairly tangible standard of measurement 
is the educational test. What the immigrant's actual 
capacity of intellect may be there are ordinarily small 
means of knowing. But a record is kept of the amount 
of illiteracy and this furnishes an index of consider- 
able value. The results thus attained confirm at every 
point the impression that the mass of our immigrants 
to-day will not measure up with those of twenty-five, 
ten, or even five, years ago. Of the 964,462 aliens 
over 14 years of age who were admitted in 1906, 
265,068 could neither read nor write and 4,755 could 
read but not write. The figures for 1905 were 230,882 
and 8,209 respectively. That is, while the total il- 
literacy in 1906 was about 28 per cent, that in 1905 
was not more than 26 per cent, which in turn was an 
increase of one per cent over that of 1904. 

One aspect of the situation which is capable of 
various interpretations is the fact that the percentage 
of arriving aliens who are debarred from landing has 
noticeably increased. In 1902 the number was 4,974, 
or .76 per cent; in 1903, 8,769, or 1.02 per cent; in 
1904, 7,952, or .94 per cent; in 1905, 11,480, or 1.07 



102 THE UNITED STATES 

per cent; and in 1906, 12,432, or 1.06 per cent. Obvi- 
ously, in these times of heavy immigration the number 
ought to increase absolutely to signify simply the 
maintenance of the traditional degree of vigilance at 
our ports. Probably most of us would feel that it 
ought also to increase relatively with more reliableness 
than the foregoing percentages indicate that it does. 
As a matter of fact, during the past eighteen months 
the proportion of the debarred has been rather con- 
spicuously declining. It is to be hoped that this is 
due^ as Air. Watchorn, Commissioner at the Port 
of New York, has asserted, to the precautionary 
measures that have been put in operation on the other 
side of the Atlantic by the various immigrant-carrying 
steamship lines, w^hich have grown tired of providing 
free return transportation for aliens refused admission 
by the inspectors at our ports. The prevention of 
undesirables from embarking for America in the 
first place is, of course, the ideal solution. Thus far 
such a policy, however, has been found extremely dif- 
ficult to realize and it is yet too early to forecast 
the results of the present restrictive measures of the 
steamship companies. They have been seized with 
such fits of thrifty virtue before. That an appalling 
number of aliens who are on the verge of depend- 
ency, defectiveness, and delinquency still somehow 
contrive to get into the country is a fact which can 
hardly be obscured. As long as this is true, one can 
not restrain the feeling that if the laws we have are 
not adequate to secure a larger proportion of debar- 



THE UNITED STATES 103 

ment, we ought to have others of a more stringent 
character. 

After all, as the Commissioner-General of Immi- 
gration has so often asserted, so far as aliens of the 
desirable classes are concerned, a solution of the immi- 
gration problem consists not so much in bringing 
about a reduction in numbers as in securing a proper 
distribution of those who come. That is a proposi- 
tion upon which everybody is in accord. Social re- 
formers, practical philanthropists, professors of eco- 
nomics and sociology, the press, the pulpit, learned 
and business associations, immigration conferences — 
all have subscribed to it again and again. The Presi- 
dent has declared for it in his messages and Congress 
has listened with more or less grace to speeches re- 
iterating and expounding it — to at least the speak- 
ers' satisfaction. Aleanwhile the immigrants, in per- 
fect simplicity, go right on crowding into the tene- 
ment sections of our great cities and adding to the 
horrors of congestion which have already become so 
commonplace as to fail to make much impression 
upon the more calloused of us. However sound the 
arguments recently advanced by Professor Willcox, 
of the Census Bureau, to the effect that the herding 
of aliens in places like New York and Boston is kept 
up only by new arrivals, while the earlier comers 
gradually fuse with the country's population at large, 
the fact obviously remains that there is congestion 
and that it does not automatically relieve itself in any 
such decree as is desirable. Statistics as yet give no 



104 THE UNITED STATES 

evidence of an appreciable change in the forces and 
conditions which have always drawn our immigrant 
classes to the larger cities and operated to keep them 
there. 

Here are the cold facts for the past year: 
Of the 1,100,735 aliens admitted, 374,708, or over 
one-third, claimed the State of New York as 
their ultimate destination; 198,681, or more than 
one-sixth, claimed Pennsylvania ; 86,539^ or about 
one-twelfth, claimed Illinois ; and 73,863, or about 
one-sixteenth, claimed Massachusetts. A very large 
majority — how large no one can say — of these people 
took up their permanent residence in the four cities 
of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, or 
in the suburbs of these great population centers. It 
is estimated that at least seven-tenths of all immi- 
grants admitted settle in those portions of the country 
which are already most densely inhabited. The move- 
ment to deflect a considerable proportion of the new- 
comers to the South and other sections of the United 
States where white labor is in urgent demand is inter- 
esting and not altogether unpromising. 

II 

Into the lower levels of the American community 
there pours perpetually a vast torrent of strangers, 
speaking alien tongues, inspired by alien traditions, 
and for the most part illiterate peasants and working 
people. They come in at the bottom; that must be 
insisted upon. An enormous and ever-increasing pro- 



THE UNITED STATES 105 

portion of the laboring classes, of all the lower class 
in America, is of recent European origin, either 
of foreign birth or foreign parentage. The older 
American population is being floated up on top of 
this influx, a sterile aristocracy above a racially dif- 
ferent and astonishingly fecund proletariat. (For it 
grows rankly in this new soil. One section of immi- 
grants, the Hungarians, have here a birth rate of 
forty-six in the thousand, the highest of any civilized 
people in the world.) 

Few people grasp the true dimensions of this in- 
vasion. Figures carry so little. The influx has clam- 
bered from half a million to 700,000, to 800,000 ; this 
year the swelling figures roll up as if they mean to 
go far above the million mark. The flood swells to 
overtake the total birth rate ; it has already overtopped 
the total of births of children to native American 
parents. 

The immigrant does not clamor for attention. He 
drops into American clothes, and then he does 
not catch the careless eye. He goes into special re- 
gions and works there. Where Americans talk or 
think or have leisure to observe, he does not intrude. 
The bulk of the Americans don't get as yet any real 
sense of his portentous multitude at all. On the liner 
coming over, at Ellis Island, and sometimes on the rail- 
road one sees him — him and his w^omankind — in some 
picturesque east-European garb, very respectful, very 
polite, adventurous, and a little scared. Then he be- 
comes less visible. He gets into cheap American 



106 THE UNITED STATES 

clothes, resorts to what naturahsts call "protective 
mimicry," even perhaps acquires a collar. Also his 
bearing is changed, becomes charged with certain ag- 
gression. He has got a pocket-handkerchief, and has 
learned to move fast and to work fast^ and to chew 
and spit with the proper meditative expression. One 
detects him by his diminishing accent, and by a few 
persistent traits — rings in his ears, perhaps, or the 
like adornment. In the next stage these also are 
gone ; he has become ashamed of the music of his 
native tongue, and talks even to his wife on the 
trolley-car and other public places, at least, in brief 
remarkable American. 

I doubt very much if America is going to assimi- 
late all that she is taking in now ; much more do I 
doubt that she will assimilate the still greater inflow 
of the coming years. I believe she is going to find 
infinite difficulties in that task. By ''assimilate" I 
mean make intelligently cooperative citizens of these 
people. She will, I have no doubt whatever, impose 
upon them a bare use of the English language, and 
give them votes and certain patriotic persuasions, but 
I believe that if things go on as they are going, the 
great mass of them will remain a very low lower class 
— will remain largely illiterate, industrialized peas- 
ants. They are decent-minded peasant people, or- 
derly, industrious people, rather dirty in their habits, 
and with a low standard of life. Wherever they ac- 
cumulate in numbers, they present to my eye a social 
phase far below the level of either England, France, 



THE UNITED STATES 107 

north Italy, or Switzerland. And, frankly, I do not 
find that our nation has either in its schools — which 
are as backward in some states as they are forward 
in others — in its press, in its religious bodies or in its 
general tone, any organized means or effectual influ- 
ences for raising these huge masses of humanity to 
the requirements of an ideal modern civilization. 

I got some very interesting figures from Dr. Hart, 
of the Children's Home and Aid Society of Chicago, 
in this matter. He was pleading for the immigrant 
against my skepticisms. He pointed out to me that 
the generally received opinion that the European im- 
migrants are exceptionally criminal is quite wrong. 
But Dr. Hart's figures also showed very clearly some- 
thing further: as between the offspring of native and 
foreign parents the preponderance of crime is enor- 
mously on the side of the latter. 

The immigrant arrives an artless, rather unciv- 
ilized, pious, good-hearted peasant, with a disposition 
toward submissive industry and rude effectual moral 
habits. America, it is alleged, makes a man of him. 
It seems to me that all too often she makes an in- 
furiated toiler of him, tempts him with dollars and 
speeds him up with competition, hardens him, coars- 
ens his manners, and, worst crime of all, lures and 
forces him to sell his children into toil. The home 
of the immigrant in America looks to me worse than 
the home he came from in Italy. It is just as dirty, 
it is far less simple and beautiful, the food is no more 
wholesome, the moral atmosphere far less wholesome ; 



108 THE UNITED STATES 

and, as a consequence, the child of the immigrant is 
a worse man than his father. 

I am fully aware of the generosity, the nobility of 
sentiment which underlies the American objection to 
any hindrance to immigration. But either that gen- 
eral sentiment should be carried out to a logical com- 
pleteness and a gigantic and costly machinery organ- 
ized to educate and civilize these people as they come 
in, or it should be chastened to restrict the inflow to 
numbers assimilable under existing conditions. I have 
a foreboding that in this mixed flood of workers that 
pours into America by the million to-day, in this 
torrent of ignorance against which that heroic being, 
the schoolmarm, battles at present all unaided by men, 
there is to be found the possibility of another dread- 
ful separation of class and kind, a separation perhaps 
not so profound but far more universal. One sees 
the possibility of a rich industrial and mercantile ar- 
istocracy of western European origin, dominating a 
darker-haired, darker-eyed, uneducated proletariat 
from central and eastern Europe. The immigrants 
are being given votes, I know^ but that does not free 
them, it only enslaves the country. The negroes 
were given votes. 

That is the quality of the danger as I see it. But 
before this indigestion of immigrants becomes an in- 
curable sickness of the states, many things may hap- 
pen. There is every sign, as I have said, that a great 
awakening, a great disillusionment, is going on in the 
American mind. This swamping of the country may 



THE UNITED STATES 109 

yet be checked. We may yet emancipate the children 
below fifteen from labor, and so destroy one of the 
chief inducements of immigration. 

For all the very heavy special educational charges 
that are needed if the immigrant is really to be as- 
similated, it seems a reasonable proposal that immi- 
gration should pay. Suppose the newcomer were 
presently to be taxed on arrival for his own training 
and that of any children he had with him, that again 
would check the inrush very greatly. Or the steam- 
ship company might be taxed, and left to settle the 
trouble with the immigrant by raising his fare. And 
finally, it may be if the line is drawn, as it seems 
highly probable it will be at ''Asiatics/' then there 
may even be a drying up of the torrent at its source. 

These are all mitigations of the outlook, but still 
the dark shadows of disastrous possibility remain. 
The immigrant comes in to weaken and confuse the 
counsels of labor, to serve the purposes of corrup- 
tion, to complicate any economic and social develop- 
ment, above all to retard enormously the development 
of that national consciousness and will on which the 
hope of the future depends .^^ 



CHAPTER IX 

WHAT UNCLE SAM IS DOING FORESTRY PRESERVING 

IN an everyday-looking office building in F Street in 
Washington the visitor will find a beehive of busy 
men, and hear the click of many typewriters, and see 
room after room honeycombed with files, while bas- 
ketsful of letters come and go. That is Uncle Sam's 
Forest Service. No; it is only the office of the serv- 
ice, the brains of it, the clerical part of it, the dynamo 
room of it, the point from which the affairs of the 
millions of acres of the government's vast wooded 
tracts are administered. It is the practical side of 
the most practical and at the same time the most 
picturesque phase of this government's internal work. 
Until in 1905, the forestry work was in charge of 
the General Land Office of the Interior Department; 
now it is in charge of a special department, known as 
the Forestry Service. 

The forest reservations under direct control of 
the Forest Service and over which it has absolute 
control embrace more than one hundred million 
acres, an area greater than the combined area of the 
states of Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, 
West Virginia, and South Carolina! Think of that 
a minute. Besides, the estimated acreage of wooded 
tracts over which the government has assumed tem- 

110 



THE UNITED STATES 111 

porary control, more than twelve million acres, would 
add an area greater than that of the states of Dela- 
ware, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island! 
Then there would be left an estimated forest area, 
which the government hopes to look after, of approxi- 
mately four hundred million acres, which, if put all 
together, would convert into one big woods every foot 
of the territory east of the Mississippi River and south* 
of the Great Lakes, including every coast state south 
of New York. Just look that up on your map. 

What is the government doing in all this vast 
area? Growing fancy trees and teaching cities how 
to beautify their parks? That is what a great many 
otherwise well-informed persons believe. But they 
could not be in greater error if they thought the 
Treasury Department existed only for the benefit of 
coin collectors, or that the principal purpose of the 
Navy Department was to teach men to swim. Yet 
there is no secret about the Forest Service; in fact, 
the widest publicity is courted. The government 
wants your help and the help of your neighbor. But 
while it must be sentiment that will save the forests, 
there Is nothing sentimental, nor esthetic, nor artistic 
about it. Back of forestry work are practical ideas, 
practical results. Of course, the service encourages 
the planting of trees for the purpose of beautification. 
But that is not the main issue. It is to preserve the 
forest for the farmer in order that he may get the 
greatest good of it, not only in beauty, but in hard 
dollars. It is to stop the men who are cutting trees 



112 THE UNITED STATES 

indiscriminately; it is to curb the woodman who is 
swinging his axe at a rate that threatens to leave a 
waste of timberless land to the public when it shall 
have finally awakened to the necessity of forest 
preservation. 

How does the government propose to stop this 
wasteful cutting of timber? For it distinctly does 
propose to stop it. This is what it says : 

First. By the example of great government for- 
est tracts, properly administered. 

Second. By the cooperation of corporations and 
individual owners of forest tracts. 

Third. By the education of the people in general 
to a realization of not only the value, but of the neces- 
sity of forest preservation. 

The general government has recognized the value 
of the work, and yearly Congress is giving Mr. Pin- 
chot, the head of the Forest Service, an increased ap- 
propriation for the use of his bureau. And Mr. Pin- 
chot is not a lobbyist for fat appropriations. These 
appropriations are quickly turned into more workmen 
and bigger surveying parties and into a larger field 
of work. For the Forest Service lacks not opportu- 
nity. At this moment the service has more than two 
hundred applications for instruction which it has not 
been able to act on. 

The young fellow who is "looking for a soft snap" 
need not apply, for the work of a student assistant is 
by no means easy. Nor will the government afford 
a pleasant vacation in the open air for young men in 



THE UNITED STATES 113 

broken health. It is not a picnic in the cool woods 
that the student assistant will have. He will be in 
the cool woods in summer and the cold woods in win- 
ter. He will live in a tent and keep lumbermen's 
hours. He will work with a ''gang/' get up at break 
of day, tramp the forest, swing an axe, measure with 
calipers, count "rings" on stumps and set down fig- 
ures in a book when his fingers may be so cold that 
the figures he makes look like chicken tracks. He 
will do this day in and day out ; at night, perhaps too 
far away to return to his tent, he will build a fire, eat 
bacon and hardtack, wrap himself in the blanket 
which he has carried all day, and dream of the folks 
at home. 

However, the forest student will have good, 
wholesome "grub" — nothing fancy; he will obey his 
boss, a trained forester, and he will continue to do 
this, rain or shine, until March or April, when, if he 
has done his work well, he will be taken to Wash- 
ington — the government pays his way there — where, 
irt the Forest Service ofifices, he will help "figure out" 
what his party accomplished in the field. And when 
he arrives in Washington, the chances are he will be 
stronger of limb, solider of muscle and clearer of 
eye and brain than those young men who have toiled 
over desks and papers all the year. 

The men at the head of the Forest Service are 
practical men; they deal in hard figures, in exact 
measurements, in accurate estimates. There is where 
the cold, practical side of this forestry business comes 



114 THE UNITED STATES 

in. If you have a timber tract and don't know when 
a tree is worth most to you, the foresters at Washing- 
ton — if you ask them, and if they liaven't too many 
other apphcations — will send you men who ''size up" 
a tree like a stock man sizes up an animal on the hoof. 
After a little measuring and figuring, about which 
you will not understand a thing, and which -very prob- 
ably you will think rather foolish, they will tell you 
just which trees to cut and which carefully to pre- 
serve, and when to cut those you have left standing. 
They will tell you how much timber for this, that or 
another purpose you will find in a certain tree and 
when to cut that tree for a particular purpose. By 
counting the rings on a stump they will tell you the 
age of the tree just as quickly and even more accu- 
rately than you, if you are a horseman^ can tell the 
age of a horse by looking into its mouth. 

In Germany they are further along. They have 
had more years in which to study forestry. They 
have been reminded more forcibly — as we soon shall 
be — of the necessity for studying forest conditions 
and then proceeding on scientific lines with the preser- 
vation and cultivation of trees. There is school after 
school of forestry in Germany; there are hundreds 
of professional foresters, and practically even^ foot 
of German forest land is subject to forest reg- 
ulations. It was from Germany that we got our 
first idea of forestry, and we are constantly re- 
turning to that country for ideas, suggestions, and 
encouragement. 



THE UNITED STATES 115 

'' In Germany when a tree is cut down, another 
tree is planted." That saying is almost literally true. 
Perhaps, in fact, when a tree is cut, two trees are 
planted, or, to be more accurate, the two trees are 
planted and are known to be healthily growing before 
the axe is brought into requisition on the first tree. 

But don't get the idea that the government forbids 
the cutting of trees, for it does not. It advises cut- 
ting. The axe, the saw and the skids have places 
just as important in the forester's kit as the calipers, 
the steel tape and the table of figures. The main thing 
is to cut with sense. The practical forester will point 
out to you the self-evident truth that the best time to 
cut a tree is when that tree is of the greatest value 
to its owner. 

The government says cut your trees, but cut them 
systematically- — not here and there as cattle graze 
when first turned into a fresh blue-grass pasture, but 
all through^ scientifically. Sense, science, and system 
are the three watchwords for a well administered and 
paying forest tract. 

In the la^ five years forest owners have wantonly 
wasted millions of dollars in timber destroyed. The 
forest experts at Washington frankly say they do not 
expect a great many private owners of smaller forests 
to care for their property as it actually should be 
cared for. But they do expect corporations and 
states to look after their forest tracts more care- 
fully than they have been doing. States can derive 
three per cent on every forest reserve they establish, 



116 THE UNITED STATES 

says Mr. Alfred Gaskill, of the Forest Service at 
Washington, and this even in planting forests. 
Indiana has a new reserve of two thousand acres 
which is expected to pay. Pennsylvania is systemat- 
ically planting trees under state control. California 
alone has a working forest area of twenty million 
five hundred thousand acres ; Maryland is beginning 
the study of forestry ; Massachusetts has a state for- 
estry association dealing with specific problems in 
tliat State ; New Hampshire is doing forestry field 
work. Extensive examinations have been made by 
the Forest Service in Alaska, and in 1903 the legis- 
lature of Hawaii passed a bill providing for an insular 
Forest Service and creating a Board of Agriculture 
and Forestry. Last year there was field work on 
eight forest tracts, with a total area of one million 
sixty-eight thousand acres, in Minnesota, New Hamp- 
shire, West Virginia, Alabama and Texas. It is in 
these primeval tracts that the government stations 
its patrols — men who, year in and year out, roam the 
forest solitudes. They are the policemen of the re- 
serves. Their work is heroic and invaluable. 

To protect these reserves from the many dangers 
which continually threaten them, the government 
maintains at immense expense a thorough system of 
forest reserve administration. This forest force con- 
sists of forest supervisors, deputy supervisors, ran- 
gers, deputy rangers, assistant rangers, and guards. 
These men constitute a permanent field force, and 
they find plenty of work to do. There are books to 



THE UNITED STATES 117 

be kept, reports to be made, licenses to be issued, 
permits to be granted, disputes as to territory and the 
occupancy thereof to be settled, and, above all, the 
forest is to be protected from fire. 

There is nothing more awfully beautiful than a 
forest fire. But the government does not seem to 
see the beauty of it, for its most rigid regulations 
are directed toward fire prevention. I quote from the 
book of regulations : "Officers of the Forest Service, 
especially forest rangers, have no duty more impor- 
tant than protecting the reserves from forest fires. 
During dry and dangerous periods all other work 
should be subordinate. Most careful attention should 
be given to the prevention of fires." The Forest 
Service says, officially, ''probably the greatest single 
benefit derived by the community and the nation from 
forest reserves is insurance against the destruction 
of property, timber resources and water supply by 
fire. The direct annual loss from this source on un- 
protected lands reaches many millions of dollars." 
The burden of protection can not^ of course, be borne 
by the state or by its citizens, much as they have to 
gain. So through its watchful fire patrol the gov- 
ernment guards the property of the resident settler 
and the miner, and preserves the timber and the water 
supply on which the prosperity of all industries de- 
pends. 

The government authorities say forest fires do 
not often result from wilful incendiarism, but from 
sheer carelessness. To guard against the carelessness 



118 THE UNITED STATES 

of hunters, camping parties and travelers is the forest 
ranger's duty. The rangers keep in close touch, and 
on short notice are ready to help one another in fight- 
ing the common enemy. So very important is the 
prevention of forest fires that the government has 
issued rules and regulations, which you will see posted 
conspicuously all through the dense wooded tracts, 
wherever the foot of man is likely to tread. 

There is a maximum fine of five thousand dollars 
or two years' imprisonment, or both, for any person 
convicted of responsibility for the wilful setting of a 
fire on a public domain, or for suffering a fire to 
burn unattended near any inflammable material. Se- 
vere? Yes, but not too severe when you consider 
the millions on millions of property at stake — prop- 
erty which could not again be accumulated in a gen- 
eration. A fine of one thousand dollars, or one year's 
imprisonment, or both, is prescribed for building a 
fire and leaving it before it is extinguished. So if 
you ever have the good fortune to get into a gov- 
ernment forest reserve be careful with your fires. 
Fire fighting has become a science in itself, and the 
Forest Service points with pride to the fact that there 
have been no really disastrous forest fires within the 
last few years. 

In damp, heavy timber_, fire usually travels slowly, 
and a few men can keep it in check. In dry, open 
woods, fire naturally travels much faster, and the 
regulations advise the fighters to go some distance 
ahead and then "back fire" from there. Fire fight- 



THE UNITED STATES . 119 

ers say that night and the early morning hours are 
the best time to work at extinguishing burning for- 
ests, as the fires die down more or less during the 
cool night and flare up again during the heat of the 
day. Contrary to the usual rule, a forest fire travels 
more rapidly up hill than down. Fire rushes up a 
hill, crosses a crest slowly and is more or less checked 
in traveling down the other side. Therefore the fire 
fighters use the crest of a ridge and the bottom of a 
hill as points of attack. 

There is a note of alarm in nearly every one of 
the forestry announcements. Satisfaction is expressed 
at the progress of the work, but concern is shown 
over the activity of the woodsman and his axe. In 
speaking of the growth of forestry and the responses 
to the call the Forest Service has sent out, Mr. Pin- 
chot says : "All this is encouraging, but the situation 
has another side. The available means to check for- 
est destruction are increasing, but so are the forces 
which make for the obliteration of our forest wealth. 
Railroads are steadily pushing into new regions, bring- 
ing with them not only destructive lumbering, but 
also fire, which is far more dangerous." 

'Tt is evident," the forester says, ''that never be- 
fore has forest destruction been so rapid as at pres- 
ent^ that we have never been so near to the exhaus- 
tion of our lumber supply, and that vigorous meas- 
ures have never been so urgently required as now. 
Judged in the light of its beginnings and opportu- 
nities, the progress of the Forest Service is perhaps 



120 THE UNITED STATES 

not unsatisfactory. Judged in the light of the task 
which must be accomplished, if we are to escape the 
hardships of a prolonged lumber famine, its work has 
scarcely begun." 

The most hopeful sign the Forest Service sees is 
the healthful interest the big corporations are taking 
in forest work. The railroads and big lumber com- 
panies are giving Forest Service every possible as- 
sistance, for they see great financial savings if the 
service succeeds, and great financial losses if it fails 
in its work. 

It is mutually helpful, too. For the government 
is making experiments with ''loblolly pine" and other 
varieties to solve the question of railroad tie-making 
material. The government authorities declare the 
steel railroad tie is not and never will be practicable. 
It is investigating the Missouri swamp forests ; it is 
studying the big trees of California ; it is giving at- 
tention to the tan-bark trees of the Pacific Coast ; it 
is looking into the Ohio hardwood forests ; it is try- 
ing turpentine orcharding in the South ; it is plant- 
ing basket willows in the Potomac flats, in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia; it is going into the study of sugar- 
maple groves — every one of which features are com- 
mercially important. It is testing the pines of New 
Mexico, the lodge-pole pine and the red fir of the 
Northwest; it is studying methods of preservative 
experiments as to the strength of structural timber. 

The whole idea of the Forest Service seems to be 
best summed up in what President Roosevelt said to 



THE UNITED STATES 121 

the Forestry Congress in Washington not long ago: 
"The forest is for use, and its users will decide its 
future. It was only a few years ago that the practi- 
cal lumberman felt that the forest expert was a man 
who wished to see the forests preserved as bric-a- 
brac, and the American business man was not pre- 
pared to do much from the bric-a-brac standpoint. 
Now I think we have got a working agreement be- 
tween the forester and the business man whose busi- 
ness is the use of the forest. We have got them to 
come together with the understanding that they must 
work for a common end, work to see the forest pre- 
served for use." * 



CHAPTER X 

WHAT UNCLE SAM IS DOING — THE NEW AGRICULTURE 

JUST three years after the passing of the National 
Reclamation Act, on June 17, 1905, was cele- 
brated the turning, on of water into the Truckee- 
Carson irrigation canals. The event was appropri- 
ately honored. A special train bearing members of 
the Joint Committees of the House and Senate on 
Irrigation, including five of the seventeen who had 
drafted the Reclamation Act, Governor Pardee^ of 
California, Governor Sparks, of Nevada, F. H. New- 
ell, Chief of the Reclamation Service, and three or 
four hundred legislators and citizens, many of them 
of national reputation, pulled up early in the forenoon 
near the head-gates of the canal diverting water from 
the Truckee River. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Francis 
G. Newlands, wife of Senator Newlands, who is 
called "Father of the Reclamation Act," broke a bot- 
tle of champagne over the huge concrete works above 
the head-gates. The ''irrigationists" turned the me- 
chanical cranks, the steel head-gates lifted, and the 
cool waters from the high Sierras rushed through the 
canal to the thirsty desert of the Carson Valley, thirty 
miles away. 

As the water flowed into the new irrigation canal 
and the whistle of the distant locomotive echoed in 
the hills^ a noted enthusiast, perhaps our greatest 

122 



THE UNITED STATES 123 

publicist in the cause of irrigation, a man who has 
written vokimes on the subject and who never neg- 
lects to talk irrigation on every public opportunity, 
was seen wiping the tears from his eyes. "I couldn't 
help thinking of some of the old-timers who did not 
live to see this through," he explained. 

Irrigation is no new idea. It was practiced in 
Egypt six thousand years ago. At that time there 
was a gathering on the banks of the Nile for the 
purpose of dedicating the first diversion and im- 
pounding dam in history. In all the changes of 
empire, irrigated lands are the only lands in all the 
earth that have been continuously and successfully 
cultivated. Irrigation was tried in California three 
hundred years ago by the Franciscan padres, and was 
established by the Mormons in Utah and Nevada 
half a century ago with astonishing success. 

But irrigation works built by the government is 
a new idea in America. And irrigation, scientific 
irrigation, as demonstrated by the experts of the 
Reckmation Service of the Department of Agricul- 
ture, and by other '^irrigationists" (i. e., those who 
study the problems of irrigation, as distinguished 
from irrigators), was a subject apparently so little 
appreciated, despite the visible results, that it took 
ten years of talking at Washington before a majority 
of the national legislature became convinced that 
there was anything in the idea at all. Even then 
"Uncle Joe" Cannon stood in the way. Many others 
■ were opposed to the Reclamation Bill on account of 



124 THE UNITED STATES 

the great expense involved. Congressman F. W. 
Mondell, of Wyoming^ Chairman of the House Com- 
mittee on Irrigation, sought out President Roosevelt, 
who knows the West and knows irrigation. On the 
night before the bill was slated to come up he said: 
"Mr. President, the Irrigation Bill will not go through 
to-morrow unless something is done to-night." The 
President immediately dictated a letter to the Speaker 
of the House and sent it to Mr. Cannon at his hotel. 
*Tt would be a crime," wrote the President, ''to kill 
this bill." The bill passed. 

Fifty million acres of arid land, it is estimated, 
at present totally unfit for agriculture, will be opened 
to the settler through the huge irrigation projects 
which the government will construct under the Na- 
tional Reclamation Act; still more land incapable of 
intensive cultivation will be rendered highly produc- 
tive through irrigation. In all, the land to be re- 
claimed represents about two-fifths of the United 
States. 

The Reclamation Act provides that funds from 
the sale of certain public lands shall be applied to the 
building of irrigation works by the government. 
The act does not contemplate government ownership 
in the sense that the term is used in the case of pub- 
lic utilities. While the government supervises the 
reclamation scheme^ it does not intend to remain per- 
manently in the business. Public land is sold to set- 
tlers, and, after the irrigation works have been con- 
structed, the sum expended in the project is to be 



THE UNITED STATES 125 

returned in ten equal annual instalments by the set- 
tlers. Thus the fund is revolving. At the end of the 
first year after which the project is completed, one- 
tenth of the amount expended on the w^orks is to be 
returned and put into other projects until all which 
the government has under consideration are com- 
pleted; when the money will finally be returned to the 
government, and the entire reclaimed areas will be 
served by an abundance of water in perpetuity, and 
absolutely in the hands of the settlers. 

The actual undertakings in reclaiming the arid 
West under federal supervision include expenditures 
in California of $3,000,000; in Arizona, $3,000,000; 
in Colorado, $2,500,000; in Wyoming, $250,000; in 
Nebraska- Wyoming, $1,000,000; in Nevada, $3,000,- 
000; in Oregon, $2,000,000; in Washington, $1,500,- 
000; in Montana, $1,500,000; in Idaho, $1,300,000; 
in North Dakota, $1,200,000; in Utah, $1,000,000. 

By the Truckee-Carson project, the first to be 
completed under the Reclamation Act, water is taken 
from the Truckee River at a point ten miles above 
Wadsworth, Nevada, to the channel of the Carson 
River by a canal thirty-one miles long. 

In the Truckee River there is plenty of water, 
but in the Truckee Valley there is little agricultural 
land. In the Carson Valley there is an abundance 
of agricultural land. In fact, almost everywhere in 
the arid West there is more good land than there is 
water. On the first of January, 1906, fifty thousand 
acres of land had been brought under irrigation in 



126 THE UNITED STATES 

the Carson Valley by means of about two hundred 
canals and ditches. Already the cabins of the pio- 
neers are seen in the valley, little one or two-room 
houses mostly, but enough to shelter the frontiers- 
man and his family, for the object of the Reclamation 
Act is to provide homes for the homeseekers. The 
land is divided into farm units limited to one hundred 
acres, and the settler must be bona fide. 

That this bleak Nevada Desert will be completely 
transformed through irrigation is fairly assured by 
the fact that wherever water has been brought to the 
land in the Carson Valley by the few owners of small 
farms scattered close along the bed of the Little 
Carson River, crops grow with great luxuriance. One 
can almost see alfalfa grow. The stock feeding upon 
it look sleek and are in prime condition. Horses, 
dairy cattle^ mules, and hogs fatten on it. Where 
some settler may have planted a seed by his back 
porch, there has grown up a fruit tree. Deciduous 
fruits, grown for home use, do well and have a flavor 
that is often a pronounced characteristic of fruit 
grown in high altitudes. 

Five years ago there was not a home in the Im- 
perial Valley of the Colorado Desert. There was not 
even an Indian hogan (earth hut) to shelter the en- 
gineers who surveyed the first canals from the Colo- 
rado River across the desert. The parched earth 
was as bare of vegetation as a skating-rink, and it 
seemed even less promising than Death Valley, for it 
lacks the mineral wealth of that region, the ground 



THE UNITED STATES 127 

being a sedimentary deposit from the Colorado 
River. 

To-day a hundred thousand acres are under ac- 
tual cultivation on the California side of the desert, 
and ten thousand on the Mexican side. Towns have 
arisen almost in a night; the principal towns are Im- 
perial, Holtville, Brawley, Calexico^ Mexicali, Heber, 
and Siisbee, ranging from six hundred to eighteen 
hundred population. There are fifteen thousand peo- 
ple and eleven school districts in the valley. 

On the American side of the ''desert" (it is no 
longer a desert), there are fifty thousand acres of 
barley under cultivation; ten thousand acres are in 
alfalfa, producing from eight to twelve crops a year, 
of from one to one and a half tons per acre each cut- 
ting. Milo maize, Egyptian corn, sugar-beets, and 
other field crops, as well as vegetables, grow luxu- 
riantly in the sedimentary soil. Flaming Tokay 
grapes, melons, and cantaloupes of the finest quality 
are produced in great abundance. And all this is 
on the Colorado Desert, a region as unpromising as 
any locality the government could select for irriga- 
tion projects under the Reclamation Act. 

Fifty thousand head of cattle are now fattened in 
the Imperial country for market. There is much 
dairy stock ; horses, mules, and hogs are raised ; a 
horse-breeders' association has been formed for the 
purpose of introducing blooded stock. 

In view of all these facts^ it is not too much to 
hope that these erstwhile arid lands will support per- 



128 THE UNITED STATES 

manently a large population. For the first time in 
its history, the government with humanitarian pur- 
pose enters upon a work which has hitherto been re- 
garded as belonging to private enterprise. 



But irrigation is not the only way the government 
is putting forth efforts as a home-maker. If a wise 
man had to say what is the most important task in 
the training of the people, he would probably say the 
better teaching of agriculture — the teaching of real 
farming and not only laboratory or experimental 
work. We have been trying to do that for a long 
time with varying success. The Agricultural Depart- 
ment at Washington and the similar departments of 
many states have worked out interesting results. 
They have tried to reach the farmers by holding ''in- 
stitutes," by conducting model farms, and by pub- 
lishing bulletins, many of which most farmers can 
not understand. This work has been to some pur- 
pose, but all the while it has been hard to reach the 
man who is now tilling the soil, or who will till it, 
for his living. 

But the way has now been found to do this, and 
it is proving successful. To mention the smaller 
movement first (which is of very great value and sig- 
nificance), the railroads have carried exact informa- 
tion to men in the fields, in the way of "seed trains." 
Better yet, the system of agricultural instruction that 
brings the real farmers to school, and they hear lee- 



THE UNITED STATES 129 

tures in the fields. Still better, under the direction 
of the Agricultural Department, skilled men now go 
to agricultural neighborhoods and conduct farms with 
the farmers. When the yield of a field in corn or 
cotton is doubled by proper culture, the man who owns 
the field and has worked it and come to understand 
what caused such an increase, has learned a lesson 
he will never forget. 

This is bringing instruction to the farmer who is 
now working the earth, and all other methods of in- 
structing him, compared with this, are indirect, slow, 
ineffectual; and, if this method is persisted in, all 
that the poets and the constructive economists have 
written about agriculture will soon seem common- 
place and tame. Men will find it more profitable 
than trade and the overstocked professions ; and the 
farmer will' really become the large^ well-balanced, 
independent, dominant man that he has always been 
in tradition, but seldom in fact. 

With the Industrial Commissioner of various 
railroads originated the idea of the "corn train," or 
a farmers' institute on wheels. The universities could 
furnish the lecturers, and the railroad could furnish 
a special train with day coaches turned into lecture 
halls. 

If the farmers could be taught to produce so 
many more grains to the ear, it would mean so many 
more bushels to the acre, and there would be so many 
more thousand bushels for the railroad to carry to 
the market. 

9 



130 THE UNITED STATES 

To illustrate what a number of roads over the 
country are doing to help the farmers, a trip of the 
Burlington special through Nebraska, described by 
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr., in The World's Work, will prove 
interesting. 

In December, 1904, and in March, 1905, the Bur- 
lington ran the first two of its seed and soil trains. 
They traveled more than 18,000 miles. Stops were 
made in 123 towns, and 40,000 people attended the 
1,300 lectures given. As there are 160,000 farmers 
in Nebraska, these first two excursions reached one- 
fourth of them. 

In December, 1905, the experiment was tried 
again. A train made up of two special cars, for the 
living accommodations of those on board, and two 
day coaches fitted up as lecture rooms, left Lincoln 
on the 18th and worked its way westward along the 
southern edge of the State, sometimes crossing into 
Kansas. 

The first morning out, between Lincoln and the 
first stop, while the lecturers were arranging their 
charts, the meaning of their work began to grow ap- 
parent from a discussion among themselves. It con- 
cerned the character of the soil, the moisture, the cli- 
mate, and conditions generally, not only of that par- 
ticular region, but even of that particular county. 
They had carefully calculated the kinds of corn and 
the best methods for that particular section, whether 
for cold, for drouth, or short seasons ; and on these 
subjects with the exact data at hand, they vv^ere pre- 



THE UNITED STATES 131 

pared to talk to the farmers awaiting them at the 
Httle town of Sterling. This data had been gath- 
ered during three years of tests made under the 
widely differing conditions in different parts of the 
State. 

Nearly two hundred men boarded the train at the 
first stop, and crowded into the two lecture coaches. 
They were American, Western and rough; and in 
their coarse overcoats and heavy boots they were 
redolent of the loamy earth or of cattle pens. But 
these men had telephones in their kitchens — the germ 
of the up-to-date was in them. They were quick for 
levity, and they tumbled into the cars and found seats 
with the same boisterous tolerance that they would 
have for amateur theatricals at Christmas time. That 
a stranger, a city man, would win their confidence, 
was not a foregone conclusion by any means. It was 
amusing to note the good-natured skepticism die out 
of their smiles, and their eyes open in a kind of su- 
perstitious uncertainty about their former beliefs. 

To a large extent, after the momentary glow of 
credulity, the farmers in talking it over among them- 
selves, fall back to their skepticism. But not all of 
them resist the temptation just to try the thing a lit- 
tle, and then the stern object-lesson of profit for the 
believer and loss for the scoffer carries its argument 
even into the councils of the cross-roads. Here is 
an example of what fifteen minutes' worth of lecture 
did for one man. The train was at Hebron, when a 
farmer In jumper and overalls stopped on his way out 



132 THE UNITED STATES 

of the car to tell Mr. Manss (the Industrial Com- 
missioner) what he thought of the seed and soil 
specials. 

"I tried to make connections with the lecture at 
this place last year," he said, "but I came in late, and 
only heard fifteen minutes of it. Well, sir, that much 
of it made me just $427 during this here past year. 
I mean to say I looked into the thing, sent for ex- 
periment station bulletins, studied out what they were 
trying to get at, then worked it out, and my crop 
brought $427 more than my neighbors got for 
theirs. They'd made fun of them dude professors, 
and wouldn't go to the lectures. They're here now, 
though." 

Thus little by little the farmer's hidebound scorn 
for scientific methods is wearing away, and this, after 
all, is the hardest victory to win over a grown-up, 
self-taught class of students. But during the year 
following there were thirty thousand more applicants 
than usual for the government monthly agricultural 
bulletins. And at the Nebraska School of Agricul- 
ture the attendance at the farmers' short session was 
doubled. 

There is also the winter corn show, and one would 
suppose the State was in a frenzy over a little thing 
like corn. Implement men and others donate prizes 
valued at $2,000, and there are competitors from 
nearly every county. 

So much for the interest awakened in corn But 
if in corn, why not in other products? As yet the 



THE UNITED STATES 133 

idea is a new one, but the indications are that it will 
be developed much more broadly in the future. We 
have seen that Nebraska should be earning eighty or 
ninety million dollars more every year on corn, but 
Nebraska is only one state and corn is only one 
product. 

Taking corn as an index, it would seem to require 
no Colonel Sellers' ingenuity in figuring, to say that 
our country's territory might be virtually expanded 
by one-third without the addition of another acre. 
An increase of one-third in our national agricultural 
prosperity merely represents the possible margin to 
be attained by the wider dissemination of the "know- 
ing how." 

David Fairchild, of the United States Department 
of Agriculture, in an article on "The New Hope of 
Farmers," says that not two per cent of the edible 
plants in the world are cultivated in America, and of 
these the American farmer knows scarcely a score. 
These wealth-producers, he says, are being assem- 
bled from all parts of the world, and by crossing 
them with native products new forms of plant life 
are created that the human eye has never seen, and 
with flavors that the human palate has never before 
tasted. Those who have been interested in the ex- 
periments of Luther Burbank know that Mr. Fair- 
child is substantiated in his statement and that, as 
he says, this new farming is turning the monotony 
of farm life into the fascinating amusement of a life 
of discovery. 



134 THE UNITED STATES 

Thousands of farmers, says Mr. Fairchild, have 
entered the field of plant breeding, and not a mail 
passes through the office of Plant Introduction with- 
out a request in it for some new plant to be used by 
an enthusiast in the creating of a new or the improv- 
ing of an old farm or garden crop. Plants like the 
asparagus but easier to grow and a third more pro- 
ductive, South American wild celery to cross on the 
American varieties, improved horseradish that yields 
a ton more to the acre, new creations in oranges that 
combine the hardiness of a thorny, deciduous Japanese 
hedge plant with the fruiting character of the navel 
orange of California, an asparagus that shall have 
blended in it the characters of the South African spe- 
cies with the Mediterranean wild forms that cover 
the slopes of Sicily, new cover crops for the lawns 
in the arid Southwest, new fodder grasses that have 
been so improved by selection that they yield fifteen 
per cent more forage than the ordinary kinds — these 
are some of the host of new possibilities upon which 
the experts of the government and the thousands of 
experimenters are at work. For every locality and 
every climate there are problems as new and fas- 
cinating to be solved. 

Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, in his article on "An Agri- 
cultural Revolution," tells us about demonstration 
farms. How the government agents demonstrating 
to farmers on their own acres have lifted whole sec- 
tions from poverty to prosperity by their new meth- 
ods exhibited on a few selected farms. 



THE UNITED STATES 135 

He tells of going to Texas during the campaign 
against the boll weevil, and explaining the plan of 
the Department to meet the evil. Because he came 
v^ithout seed or fertilizer or money for the almost 
pauperized planters, they were loath to receive him. 

Dr. Knapp explained the plan, assured them that 
the system of tillage would insure a crop, and while 
they were waiting for the government to give them 
a few thousand, they could increase their income 
twenty-five to thirty millions, add to their manhood 
and become independent. They accepted the expla- 
nation and heroically followed instructions. They 
won. 

He also tells how demonstrative farming in Iowa 
from 1870 to 1880 converted the State from a wheat- 
growing section to a stock-producing commonwealth. 
And in 1886 how a section in Louisiana was changed 
from stock-raising to crop-producing; how the poor 
Acadian natives, who had not tilled the soil, had 
never attended school, and could not speak a word 
of English, were converted by demonstration and are 
to-day wealthy farmers. 

Some of the things the wizards of agriculture are 
accomplishing are akin to miracles, and presage that 
the day may soon dawn when we can with profit 
"beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears 
into pruning hooks." ^ 



CHAPTER XI 

WHAT UNCLE SAM IS DOING ROAD BUILDING 

THE importance of the improvement of the com- 
mon roads in the United States is now so gen- 
erally conceded that it needs no discussion. This con- 
dition of the public mind is new, however. Since the 
introduction and extension of railways until a few 
years back the common roads in this country were 
neglected to such an extent that they became an ab- 
solute reproach and hindrancei to our civilization. 
Some ten years ago a systematic campaign was begun 
to educate the people upon the importance of this 
subject. The stolid indifference of the people in the 
country was stupendous, but not surprising when it 
is considered that the majority of them sincerely 
believed that the farmers would have to pay the cost 
of everything in the way of improvement while get- 
ting a minimum of advantage. To combat this idea 
the leaders of road improvement maintained that as 
the government had used its credit and lands in as- 
sisting railway development and river improvement, 
it should also do something to help the people with 
the common roads ; for it was contended, with entire 
truth, that while the railways and navigable rivers are 
the arteries of trade, the common roads are its veins 
of supply and distribution. 

136 



THE UNITED STATES 137 

It has not yet been possible to get the government 
to do anything in the way of direct assistance for 
road-building, but General Roy Stone some ten years 
or so ago succeeded in inserting what may prove to 
be an entering wedge. He persuaded the Agricultural 
Department to get a small appropriation for the es- 
tablishment of a Bureau of Road Inquiry. Of this 
Bureau he was the first director, a post which he held 
until called to military duties in the war with Spain. 
With the small appropriation at his command he 
could not do more than gather data for dissemina- 
tion by the Department, and in this way_, together 
with personal appeals, stir up interest in a subject 
which had been dormant for half a century. It was 
a big and difficult job ; but on these very accounts it 
appealed to him as no easy undertaking ever did. 

At the outset he discovered that talking and 
preaching lacked force. The people would listen, but 
do nothing. Following the maxim that "seeing is 
believing," he concluded to try the object-lesson method 
so successfully adopted in other forms of educational 
work. But where could he get the money? The 
United States had provided none, and the only states 
that were doing anything considerable on their own 
account — Massachusetts and New Jersey — did not 
need the assistance of the United States either in the 
way of money or advice. He kept his eyes on these 
states, however, and visited many of the others that 
were most in need of advice and assistance. He per- 
suaded the men who had become interested in other 



138 THE UNITED STATES 

states to visit places where good modern roads had 
been built. Here is an instance quoted from one of 
his earlier reports: "When the members of the Leg- 
islature of Virginia visited the roads of New Jersey 
in the early spring, they found them covered with 
newly fallen snow, which the farmers removed so as 
to show the firm, smooth surface underneath. This 
demonstration and the fact that w^et snow did not 
make the macadam road muddy were worth more than 
any amount of argument, and the Virginians went 
home to their impassable highways converted to road 
improvement." 

This, however, was object-lesson teaching at long 
range. What was desired was to build sections of 
road in every part of the country, so that the people 
at home could see what a good road was like, and 
make personal estimates as to the value. But Con- 
gress still lent no assistance. Some other way must 
be found. The railway companies became interested 
to an extent, and two at least of the great lines — 
the Illinois Central and the Southern — in cooperation 
with the Government Bureau, sent out good roads 
trains carrying road machinery and road materials, 
and, at places where either the Bureau or the rail- 
ways could enlist practical local interest, sections of 
road were built and the object-lesson pressed home. 
These object-lessons have borne such good fruit that 
there are hundreds of miles of good and improved 
roads — finished or under construction — in sections 
where ten years ago the subject was not even touched. 



THE UNITED STATES 139 

On account of the literature pertaining to the 
Civil War the reading public has probably been made 
more aware of the bad condition of the roads in the 
South than elsewhere in the country. The achieve- 
ments of the Federal commanders were made much 
more difficult by reason of bad roads, and many mis- 
haps and blunders were attributed to the inability to 
move troops and transport supplies. These roads ex- 
cept in Virginia, were not much worse than in c :her 
parts of the country, but we iieard more of them and 
suffered more by them. Even in the South che road- 
building spirit has been awakened, and at the end of 
1904 the Bureau reported the good roads in a part 
of that section of country as follows: 

Alabama. — About one thousand miles of gravel 
(including chert) roads and three hundred miles of 
stone roads. 

Florida. — Two hundred miles of shell and gravel 
roads and one hundred and fifty miles of stone roads. 

Georgia. — Eleven hundred miles of gravel roads; 
more than two hundred miles of stone roads. 

Kentucky. — Two thousand miles of gravel roads; 
five thousand six hundred miles of stone roads, mainly 
built as toll roads, but now free. 

North Carolina. — Four hundred miles of gravel 
roads ; three hundred miles of stone roads. 

Tennessee. — Twelve hundred miles of gravel 
roads ; one thousand miles of stone roads. 

Virginia. — Three hundred miles of gravel roads; 
five hundred and fifty miles of stone roads (mainly 
built as toll roads). 

All this has not been done since the starting of 

the road improvement movement. But much of this 

has been done in the past ten years. In some of the 



140 THE UNITED STATES 

states in the South the convict labor is used in the 
making of roads, with excellent results so far as the 
road-making itself is concerned. 

Next to actual achievement in the making of the 
roads, the most notable result of the campaign of 
education has been the alteration of old road laws and 
the enactment of the new ones under which the states 
can aid counties and locaHties where there is a desire 
for road improvement. According to the last infor- 
mation^ road laws that will enable the communities to 
get better roads have been passed in the following 
states: Alabama^ California, Connecticut, Delaware, 
Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachu- 
setts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, 
North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania^ Rhode Island, 
South Carolina,, Vermont, and the Territory of New 
Mexico. This is surely a great showing, considering 
the comparatively small means that have been at the 
disposal of the active agents who have given direction 
and impetus to the agitation. There is scarcely a 
state in the Union in which object-lesson roads have 
not been built. And none of them have been without 
result. The last report of the Bureau shows that this 
object-lesson road-building is being kept up with un- 
abated zeal. 

Of course, the ideal kind of road for the principal 
highways is the macadam. This can not be built 
everywhere because of the cost of getting proper ma- 
terial. But in the papers issued by the Bureau in- 
structions are given as to how to build these roads, 



THE UNITED STATES 141 

and considerable stress is laid upon drainage. This, 
I think, is not dwelt upon sufficiently, for, as a mat- 
ter of fact. Macadam maintained in the beginning, 
and all competent road-building engineers have cheer- 
fully assented to his teaching, that drainage is of the 
first as well as last importance. He said that the 
dry earth would hold any load that could be put upon 
it ; the first thing to do^ therefore, was so to drain the 
roadbed that it was never dampened except by the 
direct rainfall and snow, and then keep the roadbed 
dry by means of his pavement, which was really only 
a roof. Where this cardinal principle of road-making 
is disregarded, the money spent is practically thrown 
away. 

The relocation of roads where the grades are un- 
duly steep is insisted upon. The insistence of the 
Bureau in this regard has not been heeded to any great 
extent where the road-building has been in the hands 
of local authorities. The neighborhood pressure 
brought upon them is usually more than they can 
withstand. In states, however, where road-making 
is under the supervision of state authorities, there 
have been many more relocations so as to secure 
proper gradients. 

To give an idea of the importance of grades in 
road-building I quote Gillespie, who says : *'As a gen- 
eral rule, the horizontal length of a road may be ad- 
vantageously increased to avoid an ascent; that is, 
to escape a hill 100 feet high, it would be proper for 
the road to make such a circuit as would increase its 



142 THE UNITED STATES 

length 2,000 feet. ... A straight hue is the shortest 
distance between two points, but this is not always a 
rule to be followed, for sometimes the longest way 
round is the shortest way home." Gillespie estimated 
that if a horse could pull on a level 1,000 pounds, 
then on a rise of — 

1 foot in Pounds. 

100 feet the horse draws 900 

50 " " 810 

44 " " 750 

40 " " 720 

30 " " 640 

25 " " 540 

24 " " 500 

20 " " 400 

10 " " 250 

It is therefore seen that when the grades are one 
foot in forty-four feet, or one hundred and twenty 
feet to the mile^ a horse can draw only three-fourths 
as much as he can on a level ; where the grade is one 
foot in twenty-four feet, or two hundred and twenty 
feet to the mile, he can draw only one-half as much. 
As a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, just 
so the greatest load which can be hauled over a road 
is the load which can be hauled through the deepest 
mud-hole or up the steepest hill on that road. The 
cost of hauling is, therefore, necessarily increased in 
proportion to the roughness of the surface or steep- 
ness of the grade. 

The instruction by the government has by no 
means been confined to the building of stone roads, as 



THE UNITED STATES 143 

it is recognized that much the greater road-mileage 
is made up of earth roads. And this probably will 
still be the case when all the principal highways have 
been roofed with stone or some other material serv- 
ing the same purpose. In the making of an earth 
roa/ ^he same cardinal principle obtains that is needed 
for the construction of a stone road. It must be thor- 
oughly drained, and then the surface of the road 
must be so shaped that the water will run directly 
into the ditches on either side and not down the road. 
In the latter case the gullies are made, and the earth 
roadbed is converted into mud. Water is the great 
enemy of roads when not properly treated; properly 
treated, it is a beneficent agent, as it helps to consoli- 
date the surface materials, and at the same time frees 
the surface of dust and uncleanliness. 

Notwithstanding all this good work in the way 
of theoretical instruction and practical object-lessons. 
Congress has done nothing in the way of appropri- 
ations beyond maintaining the Bureau, though bills 
have been introduced and discussed. They have been 
passed by, I believe, and not defeated by direct vote. 
And I have no reason to hope that they will not con- 
tinue to be passed by, and the matter left entirely to 
the states, some of which are pressing ahead in the 
work with commendable zeal. Massachusetts and New 
Jersey, with their state-aid laws, are still in the van, 
but the recently passed amendment to the constitu- 
tion of the state of New York will enable the people 
of that State to build hundreds of miles of roads 



144 THE UNITED STATES 

each year. These state-aid laws provide that where 
a locaHty — town, township, or county — is willing to 
bear a certain proportion of the cost of the improve- 
ment of a road approved by the State Commission, 
then the state will pay the remainder. In Massa- 
chusetts the state authorities supervise the bi^-'aing 
of the roads. This is as it should be. In New Jersey 
the county authorities have charge ; this is as bad as it 
can be. Where local authorities have charge of work 
such as this, which is at least semiscientific, too many 
influences, as before remarked, as to locations and 
materials are brought to bear with all the potency 
of neighborhood graft. 

But the United States Government as a teacher 
has only begun its work. The problems in the various 
parts ef the country differ very greatly. In some parts 
there is stone exactly of the proper sort ; in other parts 
there is abundance of stone, but not of the right kind ; 
in other parts there is a great scarcity of stone, but 
plenty of wood; while in still other parts there is 
neither wood nor stone. To show the local road- 
builders how to adapt available means to their needs 
requires research, skill, practical ingenuity, and, above 
all, experienced common sense. And when a road 
has been built, the work may be said to have been 
only begun^ for the road has to be maintained during 
all its life. To maintain and keep in good order a 
poorly constructed road is quite impossible ; but the 
best road will go to pieces and ravel out unless it be 
maintained all the time. The old adage, "A stitch in 



THE UNITED STATES 145 

time saves nine," is as applicable to road maintenance 
as to a farmer's clothing. A road should never be 
suffered to get out of order. The very day that rav- 
eling begins it should be stopped. Therefore a man 
with a cart containing material and tools should pa- 
trol every section of road every week, or, better still, 
every day, and mend the raveled places then and 
there. Such a method of maintenance will save each 
township hundreds of dollars a year, besides keeping 
the roads always in good order. 

So it will be seen that the educational work un- 
dertaken by the government is not completed, and is 
not likely to be until there are good roads, properly 
maintained, all over the country. The policy of the 
zealous directors up to now seems to have been ,to 
keep up the enthusiasm by national, state, and local 
meetings; by building object-lesson roads wherever 
the means to build them could be found; by main- 
taining a laboratory for the examination of materials 
submitted, and by generally encouraging all who are 
interested or should be interested in the subject. 

The most ambitious of the object-lesson roads is 
called the Jefferson Memorial Road, and runs from 
Charlottesville, in Virginia, where the University of 
Virginia is situated, to Monticello, the home of 
Thomas Jefferson. This is a hilly country, and a de- 
gree of engineering skill is required in the location 
of a road with easy -grades. When this work was 
inaugurated, a National Road Convention was held 
at Charlottesville, and some of the most distinguished 

10 



146 THE UNITED STATES 

men in the country took enthusiastic part in the dis- 
cussions. This road has not yet been finished, for 
lack of means, but that it will be completed very soon 
is the cheerful hope of all who know about it. 

That the work of road-building in the United 
States will receive any serious checks other than those 
incident to the recurrence of ''hard times" seems im- 
probable, for people once accustomed to good roads 
will never be content with the bad ones which were, 
and, for that matter, are, the rule in this country. 
There is one danger, however, which is ever present. 
The country people themselves have been argued 
and persuaded into this betterment of their roads. 
They needed them but did not want them. If road- 
builders make bad roads that quickly wear out and 
are costly in maintenance, there will be discourage- 
ment, disgust, and then revolt on the part of the tax- 
payers. That would mean a serious check. The 
only way to obviate this is to educate a large number 
of road engineers. Some of the agricultural colleges 
have taken this up. At present the demand is much 
beyond the supply, and so it comes to pass that many 
road improvements are put in charge of men much 
better qualified to plow than to establish lines, deter- 
mine upon grades, and judge of the materials used 
in construction. We often hear that all the ranks of 
endeavor are crowded ; here is one that is not.^ 



CHAPTER XII 

IS PUBLIC OWNERSHIP A FALLACY? 

T3ERHAPS no public question has been so much 
*- agitated in the past five years as pubHc own- 
ership of pubUc utiHties. In discussing the ques- 
tion in Appleton's Magazine, Mr. Allan L. Benson 
is pleased to call it a ''popular fallacy," and his ar- 
gument sustaining his conclusion is interesting and 
brings out many points apt to be overlooked by en- 
thusiasts who are in favor of its adoption by the 
United States. 

Mr. Benson says that the workers want it. They 
believe the arguments of their leaders. They are 
confident that it will increase the margin between 
wages and the cost of living. And it is the workers 
of the whole country that have made it certain that 
the question of public ownership must be met and 
settled — and that, too, within the next decade, ap- 
parently. 

We hear much of the success of public ownership 
in Germany, but the Germans are a vastly different 
people from the Americans. The Germans are not 
in such a hurry to "arrive." They believe public 
ownership leads tozvard the goal of all they desire 
to accomplish; the Americans believe it leads to it. 
The Germans are willing to wait to see the end gradu- 
ally arrive ; the Americans would be disappointed did 
it not at once fulfil their expectations. 

147 



148 THE UNITED STATES 

And this is why Mr. Benson says that the ques- 
tion is being projected into American pohtics in an 
unusual way, and that the American people are ap- 
proaching the ■ question of pubhc ownership as no 
other people have ever approached it. They are ex- 
pecting it to accomplish results that it has never ac- 
complished in any other country. The class of men 
who form the main division of the American move- 
ment are the class of men who brought up the rear 
in other lands, and the class of men who are bring- 
ing up the rear of the American movement, or per- 
haps fighting it, are the class of men who led the 
hosts abroad. Altogether the situation is so unusual 
as to give rise to the suspicion that a wide-spread 
misapprehension exists in this country as to what 
public ownership may reasonably be expected to do. 
The American people know what they want it to do 
in this critical emergency that Professor Reeve has 
so aptly called the ''third vital crisis" in our coun- 
try's history. 

They want it to ease up on their pocketbooks 
a little, to give them relief from the extortions 
of the transportation trusts, the water, gas, ex- 
press, telegraph, and telephone companies, and pos- 
sibly from the rapacity of the coal trust, too. Com- 
plaining not so much that the prices of farm prod- 
ucts or the wages of workers are too low, both the 
farmers and the wage-workers complain that the cost 
of living is too high. The wide-spread opposition 
to the trusts is but the expression of this belief. 



THE UNITED STATES 149 

Great disappointments are not conducive to the 
well-being of a nation. It is therefore worth while 
to ascertain whether public ownership has accom- 
plished in other countries what its advocates promise 
and their followers believe it would accomplish even in 
this country. And it is also of interest to know what 
class of men brought about public ownership in the 
countries in which it is now in effect, and what were 
their motives. If the motives of those who brought 
about public ownership in foreign countries were dif- 
ferent from the motives of the farmers and wage- 
workers who are advocating public ownership in this 
country, we should know it. And if their motives 
were different from our own, we should try to dis- 
cover whether their expectations were realized. For 
the laws of economics are as universal in their ap- 
plication as the laws of mathematics. Two and two 
everywhere make four, no more surely than do like 
economic laws everywhere tend to produce the same 
results even though operating under dissimilar con- 
ditions. And if we shall discover that public owner- 
ship abroad was introduced by a different class of 
men for a different purpose, we shall do well to 
consider whether it will be likely to accomplish our 
purpose, if adopted here. 

Great Britain is the country to which Mr. Benson 
confines his investigations, because, as he says, no 
country surpasses Great Britain in the extent to which 
it has taken over the ownership of municipal public 
utilities. The government, with its parcels post, has 



150 THE UNITED STATES 

reduced the cost of carrying express packages to a 
fraction of what we pay, and most of the cities oper- 
ate their own street-railways, their electric-Hght and 
water plants, and their telephone systems. Many cities 
have also built tenement houses for their poor. The 
Tramways Act, passed by Parliament in 1870, is the 
law under which all of the municipal street-railway 
systems are operated. Under it the cities first ac- 
quired possession of the tracks, as Chicago has voted 
to do, the public operation of the systems being de- 
layed until 1891, since w^hich time forty British cities 
have undertaken the operation of their own street- 
railway lines. Coming to the questions of who were 
the prime movers in these undertakings and what were 
their motives, Frederick C. Howe, Ph. D., is quoted. 
Mr. Howe has made three separate investigations of 
municipal ownership in Great Britain, the last of which 
was made in the summer of 1905, and is reported in 
a United States Bureau of Labor Bulletin. He says : 
"Municipal ownership was primarily promoted by 
business men in control of the town councils. . . . 
Thus far the movement has had with it the large ele- 
ment which passes in Great Britain without protest 
as 'the middle class.' This class is dominant in local 
politics, though not in Parliament. From it the ma- 
jority of the town councils are made up. It is the 
great tax-paying class, and it has seemingly been fol- 
lowing what it deemed to be self-interest, in the pro- 
motion of schemes for the ownership of the street- 
railway, electricity and gas undertakings." 



THE UNITED STATES 151 

Then a little later on he says : 

"In its present stage of development, municipal 
ownership is inspired by no ideal of a changed social 
order, and the movement is likely to continue to be 
one for improved service, for business thrift, for the 
relief of the tax-payer from the burdens of taxation, 
and for increased revenue for the community." 

It thus appears that it was the business men who 
caused British cities to invest in public utilities and 
that their motives were purely selfish. They were 
not thinking about the "submerged tenth" or of any- 
body else but themselves. They wanted better street- 
car facilities^ better lighted streets, better water sup- 
plies, because they realized that these public improve- 
ments were all conducive to the growth of cities and 
to the improvement of trade. And they were also 
much interested, according to Mr. Howe^ in contri- 
ving some scheme whereby their own taxes could be 
reduced. 

The question that next arises is : Were their ex- 
pectations realized? Did public ownership do what 
it was intended to do? 

It is a matter of common knowledge that the 
public ownership of street-railways in Great Britain 
has resulted in better service. The rates of fare are 
also lower, and better working positions have been 
provided for the employees. The hours of labor have 
been reduced in all cases, and the wages themselves 
have been increased in some cases. Free uniforms 
are also given, together with a week's vacation each 



152 THE UNITED STATES 

year with pay. But the benefits to the employees af- 
fect only a small part of the communities, and were 
not the considerations that moved the business men 
who brought about public ownership. They wanted 
lower taxes. 

Let us see, then, if public ownership has done 
anything to relieve British tax-payers. This is im- 
portant, because if taxes had not been reduced by pub- 
lic ownership, the British tax-payers would have been 
as disappointed as the American wage-workers and 
farmers would be if public ownership applied to all 
of the public utilities in this country should fail to 
accomplish their purpose — the increase of the margin 
between income and the cost of living. 

Mr. Howe, in his report to the Bureau of Labor, 
says that public ownership has materially reduced 
taxes in the British cities in which it is in effect. 
He appends a long list of figures showing the amount 
each of the public utilities has contributed toward 
this reduction. 

The point is that in all these various undertakings 
public ownership has done what its promoters, the 
business men, intended it to do. It has given better 
service. It has decreased taxation. It has afforded 
large public funds for public improvements. 

And it has even done more. The business men 
who made public ownership a fact were not primarily 
concerned about providing better conditions for the 
employees of public utilities, or about reducing the 
cost of wage-workers' living, yet public ownership 



THE UNITED STATES 153 

has done both. The private owner's profit on every 
product has been divided by the municipaUties be- 
tween the pubHc, which derives its part in the form 
of lower taxes, and the result, of course, has been 
reduced cost of living for the Briton who gets his 
house rent, beef, oysters, street-railway service, gas, 
electricity, water, soap, oil, tallow, mortar, and so on, 
at municipal-ownership prices. 

The question that we Americans now want an- 
swered above all others is, whether all of these reduc- 
tions of the cost of the British wage-worker's living 
has improved the financial condition of the British 
working class. 

We want to know whether it has helped to settle 
the unemployed problem, by giving work to more 
men. We want to know whether those who have 
employment are enabled to save more, as the result 
of the decreased cost of living. 

We want these questions answered, because if the 
public utilities of the United States ever become pub- 
licly owned, it will be because a majority of the 
voters have so expressed themselves, and the ma- 
jority of the voters are not primarily interested in 
lower taxes. The United States Census Reports for 
1900 show that 53.5 per cent of the families in the 
United States live in rented houses. Nor are we 
primarily concerned about improving the service 
given by our various public utilities. So far as effi- 
ciency is concerned, at least, American railways are 
not excelled by the railways of any other country, 



154 THE UNITED STATES 

although they have given much g"round for com- 
plaint because of their discrimination between persons 
and places. Nor are our other public utilities inferior 
to similar utilities elsewhere. And while we want the 
best obtainable service of all kinds, we are more con- 
cerned because we believe we are paying too much 
for the service we get. We believe the products of 
our labor are being confiscated in part by high prices. 
And for millions of others it is too difficult to find 
employment. Mr. C. D. Kellogg^ of the New York 
Charity Organization Society, and Prof. R. T. Ely, 
of Wisconsin University, have both separately esti- 
mated those receiving pauper aid in the United States 
as no fewer than 3,000,000 persons, and all who are 
out of work do not ask pauper aid. So we want 
something done to solve the unemployed problem. 

If the public ownership of public utilities has any- 
thing in it that tends to reduce the number of the 
unemployed, or to benefit the financial condition of 
those who have employment by reducing the cost of 
their living. Great Britain's experience ought to show 
it. Great Britain has been experimenting with public 
ownership for forty years. With what result, so far 
as the objects that we expect public ownership to 
achieve are concerned? 

John Burns, a member of the present Liberal 
ministry, says that there were never before so many 
unemployed persons in England as there are to-day, 
and that never before was their condition so miser- 
able. And in saying this much he gives expression 



THE UNITED STATES 155 

to a fact that is only too apparent to all who have 
observed the miseries of the English poor. Nor is 
the failure of public ownership to relieve their suf- 
fering hard to find. These men want an opportunity 
to work. It matters not to them that public owner- 
ship has reduced the price of oysters if they have not 
the price. They want work, and public ownership, 
quite naturally, has nothing to ofifer them that private 
ownership did not offer. Public ownership, in well- 
governed cities like the English cities, is directed 
toward economical production, and if the public owner 
should require more men to do a given amount of 
work than could work to advantage, production would 
become wasteful instead of economical. 

So it appears that all of England's public owner- 
ship has done nothing to solve her unemployed 
problem. 

Has it improved the financial condition of those 
who have employment? Has the reduction in the 
cost of their living which public ownership has 
brought about left a greater part of their wages to 
be expended for current luxuries or to be laid away 
for old age? We want to know about this, because 
the working men who are voting for public owner- 
ship in this country believe it will help them by re- 
ducing the cost of living. 

Again, we may go to a report of the United 
States Commissioner of Labor for an answer. Prof. 
E. R. L. Gould made an exhaustive study of the wages 
and family expenditures of various classes of English 



156 THE UNITED STATES 

wage-earners in 1891, after the public ownership of 
public utilities had been in effect twenty years. He 
found the workers in eight representative trades work- 
ing for wages that represented only the reduced cost 
of living and the barest margin for the savings bank 
or for luxuries. 

So it is apparent that while public ownership has 
done in Great Britain what the business men who 
advocated it expected it to do, it has not done what 
the wage-workers in America who have voted for it 
or who stand ready to vote for it, expect it to do 
here if tried. 

Mr. Benson gives the experience of a number of 
European countries that have tried public ownership, 
including Germany, France, Belgium, and New Zea- 
land. The experience of these different countries es- 
tablishes the fact that the public ownership of public 
utilities does decrease the cost of living, but the 
question arises: 

Since the wages of workers still represent only a 
trifle more than the cost of mere existence, what be- 
comes of the profits that they formerly paid to the 
private owners of pubHc utilities? 

Actual operation has apparently developed the 
fact that a reduction in the cost of living that is al- 
ways brought about by the public ownership of pub- 
lic utilities is of financial advantage only to land- 
lords and the employers of labor. The landlord "gets 
his" in the lower taxes that are made possible by the 
use of part of the profits of public utilities for general 



THE UNITED STATES 157 

municipal expenses: And as the wages paid to labor 
are, broadly speaking^ always based on the cost of liv- 
ing on the lowest scale upon which labor will consent 
to exist, any reduction in the cost of living inevitably 
operates to the financial advantage of the employers 
of labor. This would not be true if there were not 
more men in the world than there are jobs under the 
competitive system of industry. As it is, the unem- 
ployed are always competing for the jobs of the em- 
ployed, and when public ownership or anything else 
reduces the cost of living, the unemployed find it 
out as quickly as does anybody else, and oifer to 
work for less. And as capitalists, in order to meet 
the competition of their business rivals, are compelled 
to cut every possible corner, they buy their labor as 
they buy their raw materials^ hiring the men who are 
willing to work most cheaply, all other things being 
equal. Nor does the public ever have an opportunity 
to reap any advantage from the lower cost of labor 
in the form of reduced prices for the things that la- 
bor makes. If the trust principle be applied to in- 
dustry, monopoly keeps the prices up^ and under com- 
petition, production is so wasteful that prices can not 
be reduced. 

Judging from the experience of other countries, the 
fundamental error of the American people in consider- 
ing public ownership of public utilities appears to lie in 
the fact that they have overlooked the existence of the 
problem of the unemployed in this country. In other 
words, they have failed to take into consideration 



158 THE UNITED STATES 

that even when industrial conditions are at the best, 
there are in all countries at all times more men seek- 
ing jobs than there are jobs seeking men. The 
personnel of the great army of the unemployed is al- 
ways changing — the man who is employed to-day is 
idle to-morrow — but the army itself is always pres- 
ent, millions strong. Its members are always seeking 
the jobs of the employed, and as working for a wage 
that represents only a living is better than idleness, 
the very existence of the army tends to keep wages 
down nearly to the cost of living, whatever that cost 
may be. Of course, the cost of living is always based 
on the standard of living of the worker. Each in- 
dustry has its own "irreducible minimum," below 
which the worker will not go. And the greater com- 
petition for jobs in a given industry, the nearer wages 
will descend in that industry to the point w^here they 
amount only to a bare living for the workers. There 
is little competition for jobs among railroad presi- 
dents. Few men have the ability to be railroad presi- 
dents. The standard of living of railroad presidents 
is high. Therefore, the salaries of railroad presidents 
are also high. But the laws of a nation should con- 
template the welfare of the average man — the man 
in whose occupation there is much competition for 
employment. We need not concern ourselves about 
the geniuses. Geniuses will take care of themselves 
in any country. 

American wage-workers and farmers who expect 
the public ownership of public utilities to leave them 



THE UNITED STATES 159 

a wider margin between incomes and living expenses, 
disregard not only these facts^ but they also fail to 
take into consideration the results of public ownership 
in other countries. They fail to recognize the signifi- 
cance of the unemployed, the very existence of which 
means that there are more men in the world than 
the employers can hire at a profit. Without this 
army, public ownership would do in this country, and 
would have done in other countries, precisely what 
the American workers believe it would do in the 
United States. The saving in the cost of living would 
go to the workers, because the competition among 
employers for wage-workers would prevent wages 
from falling after public ownership has caused the 
cost of living to fall. 

The ''general belief of the people" that public 
ownership of public utilities would save them a few 
dollars each year in the cost of living, may be wrong 
— is wrong if logic and the experience of other coun- 
tries may be depended upon. But even if this belief 
be ''groundless," reasons are not lacking for the fur- 
ther belief that it will "work its effect as sure as truth 
itself." Public ownership will unlock the lock that ap- 
parently can not be unlocked in any other way — the 
lock that holds the door between us and our own. 
The unhappy New Zealand of sixteen years ago is 
using the key of public ownership with great suc- 
cess. Great Britain, Germany, and France are pre- 
paring to use it. We need to use it as much as do 
any of the others. 



160 THE UNITED STATES 

But we should not mistake the possession of the 
key for the contents of the treasure-house to which 
it may lead us. To do so would prove to be a great 
national disappointment, if we may judge from the 
experience of other nations who have traveled the 
path upon which we are apparently about to set our 
feet. 

And, as was said at the beginning, "great national 
disappointments are not conducive to the well-being 
of a nation, especially in times of stress and discon- 
tent." ^ 



CHAPTER XIII 

AMERICAN WOMEN 

WITH what charming seriousness does the aver- 
age foreigner speak of "the feminine rule in 
America," writes Josephine Conger-Kaneko in The 
World's Work. He discusses it much as we discuss 
American rule in the Philippines. He asks, 'Ts it 
good ? " "Is it bad ? " But he never doubts its ex- 
istence. When a foreign scholar comes to this coun- 
try, one of the first subjects of interest to him is the 
American woman. To him she is the first and most 
pronounced product of man's attempt at building up 
a new political state in a new country, under demo- 
cratic institutions. He will never admit that he quite 
likes her, and this is not surprising, since she defies 
his attempts at analyzing her, and leaves him in 
greater ignorance at the conclusion of his investiga- 
tions regarding her than he was before he saw her. 

The American woman is the subject of much 
criticism. A German university professor recently 
declared that American culture is essentially "effemi- 
nated," Perhaps this is, in a measure, true. But it 
is better to have an "effeminated" culture than no 
culture. 

The elements of tradition and climate, always pow- 
erful in the formation of character, are particularly 
so under the stimulus of new influences in fresh sur- 

11 161 



162 THE UNITED STATES 

roundlngs. The American woman is not fettered by 
past centuries. She is braced by a bright and invig- 
orating cHmate. In pioneer times the American 
woman attained a large measure of independence, 
both of status and of character, together with some 
special concessions due to her scarcity. When primi- 
tive conditions gave place to the life of the modern 
industrial city, with the swift emergencies of a new 
rich class, the women had not had time to lose all the 
transmitted energy and personal efficiency of the ear- 
lier womanhood, and adapted to the new circum- 
stances of a leisured life some of the traditional in- 
dependence. 

It is not true that the American woman aims to 
be a competitor with her brother. She is his associate, 
his compeer. The men with a chivalrous, almost 
Quixotic gallantry, have set her upon a pedestal, and 
maintain the idolatry. Little wonder if she thinks 
a lot of herself. Her success in the Woman's De- 
partment of the Chicago World's Fair was what she 
herself called an "eye-opener" to the universe, and 
she forthwith reinvested that capital to enormous ad- 
vantage. What that success amounted to at the time, 
the world hardly realized, and has now almost for- 
gotten. It was nothing revolutionary, nothing sub- 
versive of the old order of things. It was the con- 
centration of organization, administration, and sus- 
tained courage. It was a revelation of wide toler- 
ance, broad horizon, and the unexampled belief which 
women have in each other. It was a surprise to the 



THE UNITED STATES 163 

world, and all the more so that it was achieved by no 
special prophet from the wilderness. It was con- 
ceived, initiated, undertaken, and carried through by 
essentially womanly women. It was an expression of 
very womanly sentiment. The best workers in that 
wonderful department were the best type of woman- 
hood — the mothers, the home-makers, the housekeep- 
ers of the country. And the American women are 
a nation of housekeepers. To be a success, a cook- 
book, a new sauce, an improved range, a prepared 
food, or a pointer in washing machines must be 
indorsed by them. The Quaker Oats of American 
manufacture has seriously poached upon the pre- 
serves of the land of cakes itself, and a New Eng- 
land kitchen has become a proverb. There are more 
magazines published in the United States on purely 
domestic affairs in one month than in the rest of the 
world in twelve. They have coined a new term, 
"Household Economics," and created a new faculty 
in their colleges, that of "Domestic Science." 

In this day of "trusts," in the very home of the 
"combine," the American woman does not shrink 
from running her own little show single-handed. In 
her husband's office an invoice is an invoice, a spade 
is a spade. The "hands" work because their work 
tells. It leads to promotion. From log cabin to 
White House is the fundamental principle of busi- 
ness life. The business is divided into departments. 
Each department has its responsible head. The 
American woman comes down to breakfast to cope 



164 THE UNITED STATES 

with a score of distinct departments, with no head 
but her own. Purchasing, cooking, cleaning, han- 
dhng of servants, society matters, the heahh and 
education of her household, — all await her sole and 
responsible attention. For her there is no "sub." 
Her business has no partner. In her husband's of-- 
fice, the message boy becomes the clerk, the clerk the 
manager, the manager the partner. In her household 
from January to December, from start to finish, she 
lives under the twentieth-century dictatorship of 
homesick young women from foreign countries, 
spinsters and widows who must "support" themselves, 
and (worse than widows) wives who have to turn 
out to support invalid, unemployed, or improvident 
husbands. A little ready cash, a stock of gloves and 
ribbons, is what these "dictators" want to tide over 
the sand-banks rmtil matrimony is reached. 

Concerning the social system that the American 
woman through her culture and tactfulness has been 
able to build up, an able analyst of American society 
explains that the first need of the industrial male 
conqueror is to display his financial power through 
ostentatious waste and conspicuous leisure. Since 
natural inclination and habit preclude the successful 
trust-maker, railroad man^ or Wall Street speculator 
from performing these rites in his own person, his 
wife and daughters become the willing instruments 
of the vicarious expenditure of time and money that 
attest his economic prowess. Hence he remains a 
business man; they become society ladies, carrying 



THE UNITED STATES 165 

into their career the energy, confidence, and resource- 
fulness of the backwoodsman's granddaughter. 

On account of this condition of affairs large num- 
bers of college-bred men, men of true culture, must 
hide their light and accept salaried positions in the 
industrial world that their wives and daughters may 
shine in society. The story is told of a college man 
in the industrial field which illustrates this condition, 
and his experience is common among business men. 
He said to a friend: 

'T have become a mere machine for turning out 
$5,000 a year. That is the price of my wife's happi- 
ness, and it takes all my time and strength and brain 
to earn it. I can't talk new books, or new plays, or 
golf, or anything else that her set talks about, and 
I'm so dead tired that I sleep most of the day on 
Sunday. I'm out of her class now^ ; I haven't had 
time to keep up. The worst is, the doctor says that I 
have a weak heart and may go off at any minute; 
and I haven't been able to lay up anything for my 
family to live on when I'm gone." 

On the other hand, the wives of these higher-sal- 
aried machines are mistresses of their own time, and 
they use it in every social way. In too many cases 
they are moved by the spirit of sport, of ennui, or 
amusement with the result that a chronic dilettanteism 
has entered into the warp and woof of our social life, 
affecting it seriously, making it shoddy, in fact. The 
most serious phases of life are converted by them 
into a means of personal entertainment. Not long 



166 THE UNITED STATES 

ago Madame Breshkovsky was touring this country 
in the interest of the Russian sufferers, and was en- 
tertained at a Chicago settlement house. As she told 
of the fearful oppression, one lady who had become 
quite enthusiastic during the recital, remarked ex- 
citedly: ''My, how romantic! Really, one feels that 
she is living the French Revolution over again." 
And so in many of our departments of activity there 
are women who insist upon ''lending a hand" be- 
cause the thing is "so romantic, don't you know." It 
is the picturesque which appeals to them rather than 
the consciousness of a serious need. 

The educated working woman, however, is in- 
tensely serious in her public work, and whatever sta- 
bility and character may be found in affairs under 
feminine control are due to her efforts. The women 
teachers who go from their colleges to small, uncul- 
tivated towns, carry with them that sense of respon- 
sibility which causes the culture that they have im- 
bibed to impregnate the entire atmosphere of the 
community. Untiring effort, day and night, to 
awaken a love for good literature, good music and 
good pictures is not without its effect. Girls whose 
mothers had never advanced much beyond reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, find themselves studying 
Greek art and German music. They read French 
literature, and on Friday afternoons debate political 
questions with the boys. 

The same young girls inspire in their mothers and 
other married women a desire to learn new things. 



THE UNITED STATES 167 

to "broaden out/' and thus clubs are formed. Some 
of these are musical clubs, and the stiff fingers of 
many a busy housekeeper are worked into a degree 
of suppleness in the practice of half-forgotten tunes 
which had been learned in girlhood days. All this 
mental contact with the outside world creates a desire 
for better home conditions, and w^omen's town im- 
provement leagues are formed, through which excel- 
lent work is done for the welfare of the community. 

In the great cities the feminine influence goes into 
every nook and cranny of social development. A 
w^oman has been suggested as mayor of Chicago, and 
the ''civic creed" of Chicago was composed by a 
woman and is recited every day by thousands of 
schoolchildren. Women compose very largely the 
reading public, and no current novel can succeed 
without their patronage. Art exhibits are conducted 
by women, and women hold executive offices in 
world's fair committees. They serve as chairmen of 
school boards, they are at the head of and success- 
fully conduct in all details gigantic beneficiary socie- 
ties. They torment, through their municipal leagues, 
the party leaders. They are notable as charity work- 
ers and they have made reputations as doctors, law- 
yers, magazine editors, newspaper reporters, preach- 
ers, and labor organizers and agitators. Indeed, 
where in the United States do we not find the woman 
with her influence battering at all doors? 

The women have established, in fact, what, had 
it occurred under different conditions and in another 



168 THE UNITED STATES 

age, would have been considered the most radical 
revolution in the world's history. Indeed, it could 
not have occurred without bloodshed — this progress 
of woman, and her development into an element to 
be reckoned with in all non-political, and many po- 
litical, functions of life. 

Social enjoyment, philanthropy, self-improvement, 
a love of study, a spirit of usefulness, a broader hori- 
zon, intellectual activity are all very dear to the 
women of the United States. But along with the 
enthusiasm for these things industrial enthusiasm is 
running a swift race, and what is more important 
than her social progress since pioneer times, is w^om- 
an's industrial evolution. This activity among women 
and children is a surprise to those who first meet it. 
It is breathed with the air. Self-reliance is packed 
into every household pie. Independence is the 
watchword of the constitution. The self-made man 
is the hero of the day. He is more spoken of, writ- 
ten about, lectured on than any other commercial 
commodity in a very commercial country. From log 
cabin to White House is the only journey in the 
United States for which there is no return ticket. 
Every Yankee boy sets out deliberately with the de- 
termination of buying the ticket. It is an infectious 
thing. His sisters won't be left at home. Free from 
Old World traditions, they reverse the old order. 
It is no shame to work. It is a shame to be idle. 
The United States is the working woman's country. 
The American woman has made this the Woman's 



THE UNITED STATES 169 

Day and Woman's Century. Even an occasional hot- 
house growth in the shape of a pubhsher, an estate 
agent, a stock-broker, a coal dealer, a doctor, a law- 
yer, a preacher, and a mayor crops up. In some 
quarters it is believed that the high-water mark has 
been reached, and the tide shows a decided tendency 
to turn. In railways, banks, postoffices, and govern- 
ment departments, and in many commercial houses 
thousands of women have been recently written off 
the lists and men substituted. A railway official, 
speaking of this, said that it is accounted for from 
the fact that women can not stand in the line of pro- 
motion, and then asked how a woman could possibly 
be promoted to the position of general superintendent. 
The most striking thing about the wages of women 
is that they are generally lower, and very much lower, 
than those of men. Roughly speaking, they are about 
half. This can not be accounted for on the ground 
of women as inferior workers. The explanation is 
that women generally occupy non-competing groups 
relative to men; the fact being that when women 
enter a trade, they speedily monopolize it. In this 
case the natural sex disabilities which prevent them 
combining, tend to bring the wage — however high it 
was when men occupied the industry — to a level with 
or even below subsistence. When women combine 
in the same trade with men, as they sometimes do, 
their wages keep up to the men's rates. The specific 
difficulty of the problem is, that, while women must 
share with men in the one portion of the national 



170 THE UNITED STATES 

dividend that falls to labor as against the other fac- 
tors, the great majority of them, either as living 
with parents or as married, are not independent units, 
and the woman's wage is part of a ''family wage." 

The census of 1900 showed that, during the pre- 
ceding decade^ young working women increased at a 
more rapid rate than any other class of workers; 
that one-half of the five million wage-earning women 
were girls under the age of twenty-five years ; that 
while the largest per cent of working men were adults 
in the prime of strength between the ages of twenty- 
five and thirty-four years, the largest per cent of 
working women were between sixteen and twenty- 
one years. It is for this class that almost vain at- 
tempts have been made to secure favorable legisla- 
tion. 'Tis time they are protected by laws that pro- 
vide for sanitation, ventilation, and lightingj for fire- 
escapes and a noon hour ; in some states there is a 
guarding of dangerous machinery, and payment of 
wages and attendance of surgeons in case of ac- 
cidents, but these provisions equally protect the 
men. 

One of the- most perplexing problems that con- 
fronts reformers in connection with the employment 
of women is ''night work." The dangers of night 
work are twofold — physical and moral. On account 
of lack of efficiency in medical records, it is not pos- 
sible to prove by statistics just how detrimental to 
health this evil is. But certain it is that anemia, nerv- 
ous exhaustion, and general susceptibility to disease 



THE UNITED STATES 171 

can be traced to loss of sleep due to night labor. 
The direct effect of night work on the health may 
be observed in one occupation where such work is 
as unavoidable as it is well arranged ; that is, hospi- 
tal nursing. Even in hospitals where night work is 
carefully regulated — a period of three months being 
considered excessive — and where night nurses are re- 
quired to rest and sleep during the daytime, their 
standard of health is below that of day nurses. How 
must it be, then, with those who work nights in laun- 
dries, binderies, and textile mills, where night work 
is long continued for women whose home conditions 
make it impossible to sleep or rest by day? 

The moral danger of night work is obvious. The 
danger of the streets in going to and coming from 
work; association with all kinds of men employees 
at late night hours ; the difficulty of women who are 
away from their families finding respectable places 
to live where they may enter late at night; and the 
moral peril of the midnight recess in establishments 
that run all night long. 

In spite of the dangers of night work and the ef- 
fect it has of ruining the health and morals of women, 
only four out of the fifty-two states and territories 
prohibit the employment of women at night. These 
states are Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and 
New York. In New Jersey girls under eighteen are 
prohibited from working in bakeries at night; and 
in Ohio night work for girls under eighteen is pro- 
hibited. . Many other indignities besides that of night 



172 THE UNITED STATES 

work beset the woman wage-earner in America, and 
the status of American working women will never 
reach perfection until the legislatures of the country 
enact and enforce a few beneficent statutes. 

When spinning and weaving and scores of other 
industries went from the home to the factory, many 
young women followed, but the daughters of the 
well-to-do and wealthy families remained at home 
and found themselves without occupation. Many of 
them had too much moral earnestness to be satisfied 
with the vapid institution called society; hence the 
new impulse toward higher education among women, 
and the multiplication of colleges which can not make 
room for the girls who flock t© them ; hence also the 
growth of women's clubs as a means ®f culture and 
a filling in of unoccupied time. 

Thus leisure and wealth are bringing to women 
a larger life with larger possibilities. They are rap- 
idly becoming in America the educated sex, with all 
that that implies. Our high schools very commonly 
graduate two or three times as many girls as boys. 
The latter drop out ©f school that they may go into 
business. 

By reason of a liberal education and courses of 
study pursued at home in middle life, for which busi- 
ness men have no time, there has come to be a large 
class of women who are much better informed as to 
social conditions than their husbands ; they have also 
more public spirit or at least more time to devote to 
the public good. 



THE UNITED STATES 173 

Neither society nor the opportunities of the in- 
dustrial world are satisfying to the American woman, 
and no fear need be felt that the foundations of the 
American home are tottering. Underneath all the 
unrest and undefined longing, there is in almost every 
woman the saving desire for the commonplace. There 
is something pathetic in the ill-disguised yearning of 
women who have been caught in the cog-wheels of 
a nation's destiny, or thrust into public view by fame, 
for the quiet home and conventional life they might 
have had. This feeling w^as voiced years ago by 
Abigail Adams in one of her letters to her husband 
when she said : "I recollect the untitled man to whom 
I gave my heart, and I wish he had never been any 
other." 

Aspiration is a characteristic of the American 
woman more than of the sex in other countries, but 
aspiration for education, for suffrage, and a part in 
the active affairs of life does not of necessity mean 
ill health, a flat chest, and the sacrifice of grace and 
beauty. The American woman is a firm believer in 
athletics. At college she gives as much attention to 
sports as does her brother, and she refuses to con- 
fine herself to the gentler pastimes of basket-ball, cro- 
quet, or tennis. She plays football, though it must 
be confessed with rules a trifle modified, and she 
plays baseball, and has her eight-oared and four- 
oared crews, too. 

Perhaps it is her consciousness of ability to under- 
stand the whys and wherefores of masculine sports 



174 THE UNITED STATES 

that gives the American woman her air of independ- 
ence in every-day Ufe. She needs no escort to the 
theater at night. When she wants to take a journey, 
though it be across the continent, she has only to 
consult her pocketbook, and does not need a body- 
guard. 

And so we see, as far as women are concerned, 
that American society is the very antithesis of Ori- 
ental culture, or of society anywhere in the Old 
World. The question naturally arises : Is it better, 
is it worse, than Old- World society? 

And the answer is, from a moral standpoint, It is 
infinitely better. We have the woman with her in- 
nate instincts toward perfection grappling with great 
problems ; and, though she has not, as a class, attained 
a perfect brain development, she has shed much light 
upon questions that have laid in darkness all through 
the centuries. America has, through her, a commu- 
nity of interests, a democracy such as the Old World 
does not know. We have higher moral standards, 
and less of the war spirit. We have a higher ideal 
of the relation of the sexes ; and, if we may consider 
the individuals, we have the finest women in the 
world, and therefore the best mothers.*" 



CHAPTER XIV 
women's clubs and their work 

IN reviewing the social and political life of the na- 
tion, we should omit a great factor for good were 
we to overlook the work that women's organizations 
are doing. In order to cover the subject briefly and 
as thoroughly as possible, we take it up under the 
workings of the General Federation of Women's 
Clubs, which, with its great biennial conventions and 
its well-developed machinery for reaching the homes 
of America, is one of the most potent influences for 
good in the social and political life of the nation. 
The Federation now contains over five thousand clubs, 
organized in forty-six states, with an aggregate mem- 
bership of over eight hundred thousand women. This 
includes clubs of ah kinds, literary clubs and special 
societies. 

But there could have been no federation without 
clubs, and the question arises, Whence came the wom- 
an's club and why? This is a difficult question to 
answer. "When a set of men find themselves agreed 
in any particular, though never so trivial, they estab- 
lish themselves into a club." Thus said Addison a 
century ago. Human nature does not change much 
as the years go by, and the motive that originated 
men's clubs is responsible also for the origin of wom- 
en's clubs, which did not come into evidence in Amer- 

175 



176 THE UNITED STATES 

ica until the latter half of the last century. Some say 
that women's clubs are an imitation of men's ways, 
but if they were, they would have come into being 
much sooner. It was the industrial evolution of 
woman in the United States that made the woman's 
club a necessity. As soon as woman asserted her 
independence and forced her way into the business 
world and the professions ; when by necessity she 
took up her abode in lodgings, apartment houses, and 
flats, then did the want make itself known that only 
the club could supply. In England, because the 
women have delayed entering business circles, the 
woman's club is very much of a social nature, its 
office being to entertain friends and make a place for 
the drinking of a social cup of tea and the exchange 
of gossip. So it falls to the lot of America to show 
the practical workings of the woman's club. 

It has been said that the distinction of the Ameri- 
can woman lies in her faculty for utilizing knowledge 
and adapting it to visible ends. To a combination of 
many talents has been added one to make them all 
available. It is a talent for ''arriving ; " in other 
words, a talent for success, either with or without 
intellectual ability of a high order, and consists 
largely in a keen insight as to serviceable values, 
with an aptness for catching salient points and using 
them to the best advantage. It is a variation of the 
same talent that has made our country the wonder 
of the age. In men it is called business sagacity ; in 
women we call it cleverness. Its shades are endless 



THE UNITED STATES 177 

and may be seen in their best light in the work of 
the women's clubs, but a golden prophecy foretells 
that woman's cleverness, if you choose to call it that, 
will find its greatest use erelong in politics. 

Mrs. J. C. Croly, well known as ''Jennie June," 
struck the key-note of the cause of the creation of 
women's clubs in this passage in one of the opening 
chapters of her book, "The History of the Woman's 
Club Movement": 

'The woman has been the one isolated fact in the 
universe. The outlook upon the world, the means 
of education, the opportunities for advancement, had 
all been denied her. The opportunity came with the 
awakening of the communal spirit, the recognition 
of the law of solidarity of interests, the sociologic ad- 
vance which established a basis of equality among a 
wide diversity of conditions and individualities, with 
opportunities for all capable of using them. The great 
advance was not confined to a society or a neighbor- 
hood; it did not require subscription to a tenet, or 
the giving up of one's mode of life. It was simply 
the change of a point of view, the opening of a door, 
the stepping out into the freedom of the outer air, 
and the sweet sense of fellowship that comes with 
liberty and light. The difference was only a point of 
view, but it changed the aspect of the world." 

The General Federation had its inception with 
" Sorosis," of New York, in 1889, which called a 
meeting of a few scattered literary clubs, and the 
following year the Federation was organized. The 
fact that the clubs included in the General Federation 
have varied motives and differing lines of work, makes 
pertinent the motto, "Unity in Diversity." To an 

12 



178 THE UNITED STATES 

excellent article by Mrs. Sarah S. Piatt Decker we 
are indebted for a resume of the workings of the 
twelve standing committees of the Federation. 

The Art Committee, which is but one of many in 
the large city clubs, says Mrs. Decker, has sent hun- 
dreds of pictures over the country for schools, libra- 
ries, and into remote homes. Great practical ser- 
mons have been preached by loan exhibitions of orig- 
inals, by classes under supervision of the clubs, by 
preaching the doctrine of "good art or no art" in the 
decoration of public buildings, the erection of monu- 
ments, park gates, drinking fountains, etc. One large 
department club in a western city has expended ten 
thousand dollars in schoolroom decorations alone. 

Under the head of "Civics" there is almost no 
limit to the work done by clubs and federations in 
beautifying streets, in studying and carrying out sani- 
tary measures, in establishing parks and municipal 
playgrounds, in preserving sacred historical spots and 
natural glories. Two notable examples of the work 
of the clubs in the latter instance are the preserva- 
tion of the Palisades and the establishment of the 
"Mesa Verde" National Park for the Preservation of 
the CliiT Dwellings in Colorado. The betterment of 
hygienic conditions in our homes also comes some- 
what under the supervision of the Civics Committee. 

Of other committees there is one on Forestry, and 
another on Child Labor, with whose work all are 
famihar. The Legislative Committee, which, if it 
had done nothing else than provide for juvenile 



THE UNITED STATES 179 

courts, has been the most important in valuable work 
of all the committees. And there is the Library Ex- 
tension Committee and the Literature Committee^ both 
doing good work along their respective lines. A com- 
mittee suggested at the last biennial convention was 
the Outlook Committee, whose business it shall be to 
spy out new fields for action. It may readily be seen 
that the women's clubs through these committees 
touch nearly every activity of life. Of course, clubs 
in small cities and in towns and in rural districts do 
not attempt the highly organized life I have been 
describing, but these do exercise in the aggregate an 
enormous educational and social power. Since the 
advent of the splendid reading courses for clubs, the 
latter have become in hundreds of cases real home 
colleges and centers of literary culture and promoters 
of refinement. 

It was in 1868 that two of the oldest and most 
useful of women's clubs were organized, viz.^ Sorosis 
and the New England Club. In Indiana and Michi- 
gan there are women's clubs that date back to the 
fifties. It does not matter so much just which was 
the first club organized ; it is sufficient to know that 
they came, and as Edward Everett Hale says, "They 
came in upon us just when they were most needed." 
Mrs. John Dickenson Sherman, in an article on "The 
Women's Clubs in the Middle Western States," tells 
of the Ladies' Library Society, of Kalamazoo, Mich- 
igan, organized in 1852 and still doing good work; 
and the Minerva Club, of New Harmony, Indiana, or- 



180 THE UNITED STATES 

ganized in 1859. Then in the seventies came many 
powerful clubs, notable among which is the Chicago 
Woman's Club. 

Mrs. Sherman says of the club movement in the 
Middle West that it is " the result of an evolution, 
and is still in its evolutionary stage." She divides the 
movement into three stages : First, for educational 
and intellectual betterment ; second, for the benefit of 
the local commiuiity, by enlarging the scope of the 
work and including some phase of public endeavor; 
third, the strengthening of club work and its identi- 
fication with state and national affairs. 

In their educational work the clubs have been 
thorough, as is shown by Mrs. Sherman: 

"In working for the cause of education, the club 
women have not neglected the things that too often 
seem petty and sentimental to the men of affairs. 
They have endeavored to bring the school and the 
home closer together through mothers' clubs, child 
study circles, and social intercourse. They have tried 
to cultivate the esthetic sense by gifts of pictures 
and casts, by the artistic decoration of schoolrooms, 
and by prizes for flower culture. They have worked 
to make the schoolhouses and grounds pleasing as 
well as useful. In the direction of bigger things, 
from a material view-point, the credit for many new 
schoolhouses belongs to women. The establishment 
and maintenance of free kindergartens are common; 
in many cases — as in that of the Under Age Free 
Kindergarten, originally established as a charity by 
the Wednesday Club of St. Louis — these schools have 
grown to be notable institutions. Manual training 
has had a good friend in the clubs ; united club effort 
in Iowa, for example, has established it in six schools. 



THE UNITED STATES 181 

Ohio crowned five years' hard work with the success 
of securing legislation for four normal schools in 
1902 and appropriation for two." 

Perhaps one of the most interesting, as well as 
the most valuable, things the club women of Chicago 
ever attempted in the way of education is the 'Vaca- 
tion school." The first vacation school was established 
in 1896 by the Civic Federation, and so successful 
did it prove that in 1898 the women's clubs took up 
the work and the committee established five schools. 
Every year since the number of schools has increased. 
There is a vacation school board with a club woman 
president and secretary; the other members consist 
of eight club women and eight men. Since 1898 the 
club women have contributed nearly $25,000 for the 
maintenance of these schools. Twenty-eight nation- 
alities were represented in these schools in 1905. The 
Italians led with 1,424, and the Jews followed with 
1,408. The Germans were third, with 1,074. Other 
nationalities with good-sized enrolment were the Bo- 
hemians, 670 ; Irish, 434 ; American, Z7?) ; Norwegian, 
270; Swedish, 269; Russian, 246; Polish, 214. That 
the efforts of these club women are appreciated by 
those whom they are intended to benefit, is evidenced 
from the fact that when the school was opened in 
the Ghetto, a mob of fifteen hundred men, women, 
and children fought in front of the building for a 
chance to enter^ and three policemen were powerless. 
Every day of the term a crowd stood in front of the 
door waiting for a vacancy made by the chance ill- 



182 THE UNITED STATES 

ness of some child. It is estimated that fifteen thou- 
sand children were turned away from the schools 
that summer, and that thirty schools would be none 
too many to carry on the work that eight tried to 
do in 1905. 

The Englewood Women's Club furnishes the school- 
children with hot luncheons each day; the Chicago 
Woman's Club has a Schoolchildren's Aid that fur- 
nishes needy children with suitable clothing so they 
may be kept in school. The society collects from 
$7,000 to $9,000 each year. The Michigan State 
Federation has pledged a memorial loan fund of 
$5,000 for the benefit of women students in the Uni- 
versity of Michigan. The fund is a memorial to 
Mrs. Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, " mother of clubs in 
Michigan," a pioneer in securing coeducation in col- 
leges, and for a long time an instructor in the Uni- 
versity. And so we might go on enumerating what 
women's clubs are doing for education. 

Of the crowning work of women's clubs, the es- 
tablishment of the juvenile court, we will let Mrs. 
Sherman tell us: 

*To the club women of the Middle West belongs 
the honor of bringing a new element into jurispru- 
dence in the juvenile court law. The juvenile court 
is an instrument for good whose tremendous power 
is only beginning to be felt. The first court was es- 
tablished but eight years ago, yet already eighteen 
states have adopted the Illinois law, either in whole 
or in part. While the juvenile court is not a cure- 
all, and is an instrument and not an end, it is the best 
solution yet devised of the problem of defective and 



THE UNITED STATES 183 

delinquent children in crowded communities. It is 
perfectly safe to say that within a very few years it 
will be in every considerable self-respecting city of 
the United States. The old idea was that the child, 
like the adult who had broken the law, must be tried 
and punished. The new principle is that, even if the 
child has violated the law, the state must act as a wise 
parent, and so deal with the case that evil tendencies 
will be eradicated and the juvenile offender educated 
into good citizenship. Perhaps the spirit of the law 
may be condensed into the phrase, *A square deal for 
the child.' 

'The movement that has brought about the ju- 
venile court had its beginning in the Cook County 
jail in the city of Chicago. Under the old conditions 
the police courts and jails swarmed with children, who 
were herded with mature criminals. For several 
years the Chicago Woman's Club had been maintain- 
ing a school in the jail, and the conditions that ob- 
tained convinced them that the system was not only 
foolish but wicked. They determined to make an ef- 
fort to secure a distinction in the eye of the law be- 
tween the mature criminal and the irresponsible child. 
The club secured the services of an able jurist, the 
late Harvey B. Hurd. He drew a bill which was in- 
dorsed by the Chicago Bar Association and passed 
by the legislature. The new law went into effect in 
1899. The juvenile court statute sets forth the power 
of the state to exercise through its courts of chan- 
cery its guardianship of the child. It establishes this 
guardianship over two classes of children — dependents 
and delinquents. A dependent child it not only one 
who is homeless, destitute or abandoned; it is also 
dependent if it has not proper parental care, and if 
its home, by reason of the fault of its natural guard- 
ians, is not a fit place for it. A child is delinquent 
not only when it violates the law, but also when it 
is incorrigible, when it consorts knowingly with 
criminals, or when it is growing up in idleness and 



184 THE UNITED STATES 

crime. The age limit of the original law, sixteen 
years, has been raised to eighteen. The court does 
not sit as a court of law, but of chancery. The court 
merely assimies the guardianship of the child and 
does not punish the delinquent. When not paroled, 
it is sent to some reformatory institution. The tra- 
ditional customs of a law court are done away with ; 
the chancellor is judge and jury, and practically 
all the machinery. This is the gist of the Illinois law 
of 1899, the basis of most of the laws of other states. 
Colorado made an important addition in the delin- 
quent parent law, providing for the punishment of 
offending parents by the juvenile court. Illinois in 
turn adapted this provision to local conditions. 

"In this new court, the power entrusted to the 
presiding judge is enormous, but it is a characteristic 
of our American people that when an occasion arises, 
the man is not wanting. This occasion has brought 
out at least two men of striking genius — Judge Ben 
B. Lindsey^ of Denver, and Judge Julian W. Mack, 
of Chicago. Without attempting to compare the 
two men, one may say that the former does his mar- 
velous work under more favorable conditions. Judge 
Lindsey, for example, has heard about two thousand 
cases in four years ; Judge Mack hears about eight 
thousand cases a year. Judge Mack can not per- 
sonally stand in the place of parent to several thou- 
sand children ; the intermediary is the probation of- 
ficer. Most of these are women, and the club women 
have not only raised money for the payment of their 
salaries, but have seen that the positions are filled 
with the right kind of women. Each officer is in 
charge of a district and about fifty boys. This officer 
visits the child's home and requires frequent reports 
from him. The plan in most states is to make the 
probation officer a paid employee of the court, the 
supposition being that the work of volunteers is not 
generally satisfactory. Indianapolis, however, has 
developed the volunteer system to a high state of 



THE UNITED STATES 185 

efficiency under the Indiana law. There are about 
one hundred and fifty officers, and no one officer has 
more than three children under his charge; often 
there is but one. Recently in Chicago Judge Mack 
has supplemented the services of the regular officers 
by making probation officers of the Visiting Nurse 
Association, which last year ministered to fully seven 
thousand sick people in poor families — another benefi- 
cent work which the club women encourage with 
moral and financial support. In Iowa the Congress 
of Mothers, belonging to the state federation, took 
the lead in securing the juvenile court law of that 
State. Ohio's law was passed in 1904, and the credit 
is largely due to its club women, the passage of the 
law having formed one of the paramount issues of 
the clubs in the State." 

Of the character of the club women in the Mid- 
dle West, Mrs. Sherman speaks as follows : " The 
rank and file of the club women of the Middle West 
form a truly admirable body of women — loyal, sin- 
cere, and thoroughly in earnest. Well-to-do, well- 
informed and capable, unhampered by the very rich or 
the very poor, the flower of every community, they 
are at once an aristocracy and democracy of brains 
with the watchword, ' The Home, Patriotism, and 
Good Government.' " 

Mr. W. L. Bodine, superintendent of compulsory 
education in Chicago, pays this tribute : " Women's 
clubs are the natural product of a progressive sex 
living in a progressive age. They stand for the home, 
for the school, for art and literature and music; for 
domestic science and for the intellectual advancement 
of the American woman who presides over the Ameri- 
can home. They are not theoretical, they are practi- 
cal ; they act, they do things for the good of society, 
for the good of the community and of the country. 
The great woman means the better nation."** 



CHAPTER XV 

JOURNALISM IN AMERICA 

TO account for the status of modern journalism as 
it is to be found in America to-day, a retrospec- 
tive glance is almost necessary. Not only is it nec- 
essary, but interesting and instructive as well; just 
as it is interesting to know, in studying some promi- 
nent character, what sort of a child was father of 
the man. 

We all know in a vague sort of a way^ that the 
newspaper passed through many years of experimen- 
tal struggle before it gained a footing and could be 
called a self-supporting institution and eventually a 
money-making investment. For many years, too, the 
term ''journalism" applied only to newspapers. And 
now it is considered by many that the newspaper has 
swung to the other extreme and has become purely a 
commercial enterprise, and that journals that aim to 
exert an influence upon politics and ethics are rap- 
idly diminishing in number. The editor no longer 
hires the publisher and business manager; the pub- 
lisher hires the editor. And many, too, consider that 
the leading magazines are the only true exponents 
of American journalism. 

New York City is the Mecca of newspaperdom, 
though Chicago is said to be its training-ground for 
recruits. To New York Journals, then^ will it be 

186 



THE UNITED STATES 187 

profitable to turn our investigations, so far as we 
shall need individual illustration. 

The Sun was the pioneer penny newspaper in 
New York. It was first issued September 2>, 1833, by 
Benjamin H. Day, an intelligent working man, and 
a job printer by occupation. It started with a cir- 
culation of three hundred. Its first issue contained 
twelve columns of matter, each column ten inches 
long. It was filled with bits of local interest and 
with advertisements of "Help Wanted." But this made 
it popular with the masses in search of employment. 
The first large increase of the visible radiance of the 
Sun was derived from the lively imagination of its 
editor, Richard Adams Locke, who published an ar- 
ticle purporting to describe discoveries made by Sir 
John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope. Sir John 
was then at the Cape, and had set up a new telescope 
there. The story ran that the telescope had revealed 
everything on the surface of the moon, and had dis- 
covered inhabitants, houses, soil, crops, animals, and 
modes of living. Every one believed it at first and 
every one bought the Sun to read about it. The 
New York Herald finally exposed the hoax, but the 
reputation of the Sun was made^ and Mr. Day intro- 
duced steam power into his office in order to keep 
up the demand. The Sun was the pioneer in this 
mechanical improvement as well as in the publication 
of such gigantic ''fakes." 

Bennett had discovered that a paper which is 
usually denounced will be universally read. He had 



188 THE UNITED STATES 

perceived that a democratic revival demanded a demo-^ 
cratic press, and his tough Scotch fiber was elastic 
enough to endure either pull or pressure. He deter- 
mined to make a paper that should be the master of 
politicians, not the tool. To that purpose, despite all 
his frivolities and sinuosities, he clung with the te- 
nacity of a Scotchman and the effrontery of a French- 
man. Moreover, Bennett possessed, in a high degree, 
the ability which is at once the pride and bane of 
two-thirds of our so-called successful journalists to- 
day — the ability to write crisply, interestingly, and 
omnisciently about everything, including the things 
of which he knew nothing. Out of the cellar at No. 
20 Wall Street, came the first copy of the Daily Her- 
ald, May 6, 1835, a little four-page penny paper, with 
four columns to a page. Bennett literally fulfilled 
his editorial promise to ''give a picture of the world." 
He first, in 1835^ went on 'Change, note-book in hand, 
and wrote daily descriptions and reports of the stock 
markets. He first seized upon the opening of steam 
communication with Europe to organize upon that 
continent a bureau of foreign correspondence. He 
first, in 1838^ adopted the practice of reporting the 
proceedings of courts of law when cases of public 
interest were on the docket. Mr. Bennett's news- 
paper was quite emancipated also from accepted 
standards of conventionality, one might almost say 
of ethics. He knew better than any of his rivals the 
value of wholesale advertising, and his cold-blooded 
manner of translating notoriety into dollars and cents 



THE UNITED STATES 189 

shocked the chivalrous soul of James Watson Webb. 
According to Webb's catechism, gentlemen whose es- 
timates were too sharply criticized, or whose motives 
were impugned, could discover a healing balm only in 
an invitation to shed blood. Bennett laughed at such 
conduct and laughed also at such provocations. 
Every attack upon him was daily chronicled in the 
Herald and made a fresh means for exalting the horn 
of the newspaper for extending its circulation. Ben- 
nett was assaulted on the street and in his office by 
those whom he censured and lampooned. Infernal 
machines were sent to blow him into atoms. Ben- 
nett answered with blows of ridicule, and the public 
laughed with him and swelled the revenues of the 
Herald still more. 

In connection with the Philadelphia Ledger and 
the Baltimore Sun, the New York Herald established 
the famous pony express from Mobile to Montgomery 
during the Mexican War, by which all the details of 
that war appeared in those journals before they were 
received by the authorities at Washington. 

This exploit destroyed all there was left of the 
Holy Alliance, and its principal members were glad 
to join, in 1849-51, with the Herald in the combina- 
tion for news-getting which is now known as the 
New York Associated Press. 

The newspaper of to-day has retained some of the 
worst features of early journalistic work and lost 
many of the best features. Truman A. De Weese, of 
the editorial staff of the Chicago Record-Herald, wri- 



190 THE UNITED STATES 

ting in the Independent some time ago, said: "The 
journalistic leaders whose virile pens and forceful 
personalities vitalized and illumined every line of the 
editorial page, have nearly all passed away. Only a 
few of that school of writers who believe it to be 
the function of a newspaper to mold public opinion 
and proclaim the transcendent virtues of a particular 
party are left. The journalist of to-day is impersonal, 
hence irresponsible. The personality of the writers 
is obscured. The public can not connect editorial 
utterance with a personality that stands for expert 
knowledge or common honesty. Is it unnatural that 
the public should gradually decline to regard the un- 
signed editorial or newspaper article as worthy of uni- 
versal acceptation as ' the law and the gospel ' on any 
particular subject?" 

This same writer illustrates the sinking of the in- 
dividuality of the journahst of to-day as follows: 

^'Suppose you are in public office, and you find on 
reading over the editorial page of the Herald some 
morning that you are characterized as a * boodler.' 
Of course, the editor is supposed to be responsible, 
but if you start on a search for him, the chances are 
that you will find he is in Europe. You would like 
to find the man who wrote the editorial. But you 
won't find him. His personality is hidden behind the 
fallacious theory that ' the newspaper is greater than 
the writer ' who furnishes brains for it ! How can a 
salable print be greater than the men who make it? 
If the cupidity or meanness of the publisher led him 
to point out the editorial detractor to you, in order 
to shield himself, you would not have the heart to 
put him in jail, even if you could. He is merely a 



THE UNITED STATES 191 

hired man, sinking his individuality and obscuring 
his personaHty from the world in an effort to carry 
out * the policy of the paper.' " 

In the opinion of Mr. De Weese, the newspaper 
is not, could not be, and should not pretend to be, 
anything but a commercial enterprise, and he gives 
these reasons: 

"First, the impersonal editorial character of the 
modern daily in the larger cities makes it impossible 
for the public to connect its editorial utterances or 
news articles with any responsible authority." And 
he quotes Mr. Brooks Fisher : " With the press in the 
hands of business men, therefore, its abdication of 
leadership in the style of the Thunderer and of the 
famous journals of the past in this country, is a 
foregone conclusion." Of the "new journalism" Mr. 
Fisher says that the newspaper "for business abdi- 
cates the old function and dignity of and duty of the 
press in leadership, and instead of fronting the mob, 
follows it." 

" * The power of the press,' " says Mr. De Weese, 
"is a pleasant bit of fiction kept alive by the politicians, 
who cajole the editor into pounding away in the in- 
terest of their party, — which is generally for their 
personal enrichment, — while the editor lives in a 
rented cottage and his coal bill goes unpaid. The 
journalism that is to wield any influence in the fu- 
ture must be a signed journalism, such as now finds 
its representation in the weekly and monthly maga- 
zines, with their timely and forceful discussion of 



192 THE UNITED STATES 

living issues and contemporaneous happenings by 
men and women of acknowledged standing in special 
fields of thought and investigation." 

Second, he thinks the newspaper should be con- 
sidered in the light of a commercial enterprise, be- 
cause it "is not endowed by the state or by any party 
or propaganda." He asks these questions : " Why 
should the editor risk his private means to ' teach ' the 
masses, to instruct them as to their political obliga- 
tions and duties ? Who is going to pay him for 'front- 
ing the mob ? ' 

''Third, the newspaper is not only not an endowed 
institution, but the state exacts no professional re- 
quirements or standards from those who desire to 
practice journalism." The writer cites that lawyers, 
doctors, teachers, and in some states barbers and 
horseshoers, must be examined as to their fitness for 
the business they desire to follow. But in journalism 
"any man, no matter how unlettered, vicious, or de- 
praved, may start a newspaper and scatter broad- 
cast the seeds of sedition, class hatred, and dis- 
content, or the fruits of ignorant, narrow-minded 
prejudice. 

"Fourth, the unavoidable inaccuracy of the news- 
gathering machinery of the modern daily newspaper. 
In most cases this inaccuracy is the fruit of a system 
that attempts to cover the events and transactions of 
the earth every twenty-four hours. 

"In the face of these conditions," asks the writer, 
"why should the newspaper cling to the fiction that 



THE UNITED STATES 193 

it is a ' teacher ' and not a commercial enterprise ? " 
But he adds : 

"The transition from ' journalism ' to the * news- 
paper industry ' need not involve any loss of power 
and dignity on the part of the daily press. As a 
purely commercial proposition, it may still be a mighty 
force in human affairs. Its financial success as a 
commercial enterprise places it in a position of ab- 
solute editorial independence. It will still be the motion 
picture of civilization. Any organized industry that 
daily sweeps the wide domain of human thought and 
activity and spreads before the people every morning 
or afternoon a picture of the world's important hap- 
penings and transactions^ with rational, sane, and 
well-tempered editorial side-lights thrown upon them, 
could not fail to be incomparably the greatest and 
most powerful among the forces that make for human 
progress." 

Many people believe that American journalism to- 
day is not just what it should be, and in an address 
on the subject to the students of journalism at Yale, 
Mr. Munsey has thrown some side-lights on its status 
to-day, its needs, and its possible future. Since no 
one is better able to expound the subject than this 
great journalist, we can not do better than to quote 
from him. He says : 

"The newspaper man of to-day is a composite 
type, the product of the New York Sun and the New 
York World of fifteen or eighteen years ago. These 
two newspapers represented two distinct and widely 

13 



194 THE UNITED STATES 

different styles of journalism. The World was alert, 
daring, aggressive, and sensational. It was about the 
liveliest thing that ever swung into New York from 
the West. Nominally, it was here long before Mr. 
Pulitzer's day, but actually it came with his advent. 
It shook up the entire American press. It did new 
things, and did them with a dash. Its circulation 
bounded from nothing to hundreds of thousands. 
Other newspapers were being forced upon the rocks. 
The World was It. 

*'The result of this cyclonic success was that most 
men, and especially young men just entering the pro- 
fession, accepted Mr. Pulitzer and his newspaper 
methods as the only guide to position and wealth; 
hence the great army of Pulitzer journalists that 
stretches from the shores of Maine to the Golden 
Gate. 

"No man ever stamped himself more thoroughly 
upon his generation than has Joseph Pulitzer on the 
journalism of America. He was the originator and the 
founder of our present type of overgrown Hewspaper, 
with its illustrations and its merits and defects. 

''The part the Sun played in this recreating and 
rejuvenating of the American press was purely lit- 
erary. It was the first newspaper to make fiction out 
of facts; that is, to handle facts with the skill and 
the manner of the novelist, so that they read like fic- 
tion and possessed all its charm and .fascination. 

"The Sim at that time consisted of but four pages. 
With the exception of one or two of these fiction- 



THE UNITED STATES 195 

fact stories so charmingly told, it was the perfection 
of condensation. 

''Attractive as were the Stin's fiction stories, their 
influence upon journalism has been as unfortunate in 
some respects as that of the Pulitzer methods. They 
were copied from one end of the country to the other, 
but the imitator never quite hits anything off on the 
same key. We have their verbosity without their 
cleverness. Instead of being limited to one or two 
articles, at most, as was the case with the old Sun, 
they have been multiplied until they well-nigh fill the 
whole paper. In time this Sun style became mixed 
with the World style, resulting eventually in a mon- 
grel product which is largely the vogue to-day." 

Regarding the present needs of journalism, Mr. 
Munsey says: 

"What we most need in our Amercian journalism 
to-day, it seems to me, is a new school of newspaper 
men. We have reached a condition where one can 
not safely accept a piece of news as true until it is 
verified. We need to get back to the fundamental 
simplicity and straightforward honesty." 

Mr. Munsey says the trouble is not with the men ; 
it is with the standard. The reporters of to-day are 
living up to their conception of this standard of wide- 
awake, modern journalism. 

"A newspaper staff," says Mr. Munsey, "must be 
created from young men. Money can not buy it nor 
can it be transplanted. 



196 THE UNITED STATES 

''The daily journal is almost wholly the product 
of the men a publisher has about him. As the men 
are, so will the paper be. The men then are the fun- 
damental thing in newspaper making." 

Of the journalism of the future, Mr. Munsey 
sounds this note of hope : 

"The journalism of the future will be of a higher 
order than the journalism of the past or the present. 
Existing conditions of competition and waste, under 
individual ownership, make the ideal newspaper im- 
possible. But with a central ownership big enough 
and strong enough to encompass the whole country, 
our newspapers can afford to be independent, fear- 
less, and honest. It will no longer be a question 
of keeping the machinery in motion. 

"Then giants will be the heart and brain of our 
journalism. This new journalism will have a faculty 
such as no university in the world ever had or ever 
will have. A million dollars a year for the general 
editorial department for a chain of a thousand papers 
will mean only a thousand dollars to each paper. 

"An organization like this will call for the best 
there is in men^ and will command the wisdom and 
the culture of the world. With such a faculty at the 
head of our newspapers, you will have a post-grad- 
uate course in your own home and the people will 
have their university." 

We have endeavored to give, and think we have 
succeeded, two widely differing views of American 
journalism. Both are correct from each individual 



THE UNITED STATES 197 

point of view. 'Tis beyond question that the news- 
paper has been converted from pure journaHsm into 
an industry. It is equally true that it is a ''teacher," 
and that its province in the future progress of civi- 
lization will be still more that of an educator and 
molder of public opinion.^ 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE AMERICAN PULPIT 

NO comprehensive view of the origin and growth 
of American institutions can be had apart 
from some just appreciation of the part the American 
pulpit has taken therein. While the pulpit is far 
from being American in its origin, it is within the 
frontier of fact to say that it has reached a higher 
point of development and of comparative power here 
than anywhere else. The forum being the first-born 
institution of a democracy, leads the way to the pul- 
pit being a live instead of a merely dogmatic force 
in the development of that democracy. 

There is no stage of American history where the 
pulpit has not been conspicuous, even in the present 
day when the fashion seems to be to count it among 
the second-rate forces. The republic virtually began 
to live in the words of a preacher, John Robinson, 
who stood on the shore as the Pilgrim Fathers began 
their first journey westward and, besides bidding them 
Godspeed and adjuring them to be true to their prin- 
ciples^ enunciated that historic word "that God has 
still more light and truth to break forth from his 
Word." When the Pilgrim Fathers landed, their 
meeting-house was constructed coincident with their 
homes. As the colonies grew, the minister was a man 
of authority, and his pulpit the newspaper, bulletin- 

198 



THE UNITED STATES 199 

board and seat of religious authority. As the mental 
strength of the nation grew and Emerson, himself a 
pulpiteer for a time, issued what has been called the 
American declaration of intellectual independence, 
creating what historians have overlooked as an epoch 
equal in significance to a national struggle, the gaunt- 
let was taken up by the pulpits and grain threshed 
from chaff to the broadening of the people's outlook. 
And when civil war was imminent, it was the promi- 
nent pulpits of the country that bade the fearful see 
God's hand in the conflict, and while armies supplied 
the physical force of war, pulpits furnished the moral 
justification and altruistic motive. In these days the 
pulpit's power is of a finer and more potent kind, as 
it seeks to turn the nation from mere commercialism. 
Thus as adviser, governor, interpreter, and inspira- 
tion the pulpit can not be left out of any epoch with- 
out leaving an unexplained gap. 

All great movements of men are essentially relig- 
ious movements, although not recognized as such. 
There is a moral subtone underlying every word the 
peoples speak seriously. Though it were but rebel- 
lion, Cromwell's soldiers sang psalms and heard ser- 
mons. Though it were not far from fratricide, the 
pulpits of the North spoke cheer to the armies, as 
did the pulpits of the South. Though it meant blood- 
shed, the pulpits had no little to do with the emanci- 
pation of Cuba. In all these movements the moral 
sense of the people was aroused, and they looked to 
the pulpits for the spiritual interpretation of the un- 



200 THE UNITED STATES 

rest that had seized upon them. There has been, 
there can be, no far-reaching movement affecting 
the mass without the power of the pulpit being felt. 
Even the revolutionists of Paris must have their god- 
dess and certain skeptical philosophers to act with 
them in the stead of priests. This condition seems 
to be an absolute necessity to all popular movements. 
It is customary in some quarters to say that the 
pulpit's power is fast waning before the marked de- 
velopment of the press. It has been contended that 
even now the printed page is usurping the place of 
the living voice. Apparently there is some ground 
for this contention^ but why it should be held exclu- 
sively in relation to the pulpit is not explained, and 
if it were, it would but discover the weakness of the 
contention. Wagner's wonderfully spiritual operatic 
work can be had in the printed page. Score and 
words of "Parsifal" may be had at any store for a 
small sum of money. One may sit in one's chair and 
have before one's eyes the full orchestration of the 
most elaborate production of any of these master 
works. One may in the silence of one's chamber read 
the inspiring lines of the young shepherd in search 
of what he knows not of — the mystic ideal. But — 
does one do this? Is it not true that an increasing 
number of persons in this and other countries are 
weeding out of their tastes a less artistic class of 
plays and going in greater numbers and with greater 
appreciation than ever to witness the exposition of 
these high moral themes? It is apparently true that 



THE UNITED STATES 201 

in this instance, at least, the printed page is not crowd- 
ing out the hving voice and action. 

But, to confine the examination to its purely lit- 
erary side : is the printed page of Shakespeare ob- 
scuring the pulsing characters that portray his 
thought in the garb and speech of the day it came to 
him? Then, why^ out of all the provinces in which 
the press can supplant the person, is only the pulpit 
chosen as the province that must be conquered? 

The essential strength of the American pulpit is 
the living voice in a plea for righteousness. Abstract 
principles can no more stir the moral impulse than 
can a phonograph nerve an army for battle. Em- 
bodied principles are the only ones the masses rec- 
ognize, and examples are more potent than precepts. 
Until the living voice loses its inspiring force; until 
the spiritual appeal ceases to find response; until the 
natural hunger of the people for knowledge of the 
higher life and ideal things ceases to be felt, the 
American pulpit will be a necessary part of 
American life. 

No territory in all the world has been more fer- 
tile of sects whose activities are missionary than has 
America. From our earliest day there have been di- 
visions theological, until the veriest hair-splitter fails 
in his attempts to discover the exact points of differ- 
ence. But the point is that each of these divisions 
has its host of propagandists and each propagandist 
his pulpit. Hence the wide diffusion of the pulpit. 
From ultraspiritualism to ultramaterialism the creeds 



202 THE UNITED STATES 

are written, and preachers by scores support those 
creeds. From the veriest orthodoxy to the broadest 
liberaHsm there are pulpits standing for distinctive 
doctrines or for no doctrines at all. But they are pul- 
pits, nevertheless, and go to enlarge that composite in- 
stitution we here call the American pulpit. 

From Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards to 
Henry Ward Beecher and Felix Adler is a long step, 
both chronologically and theologically, but between 
these points is all that is contained in the term Amer- 
ican pulpit. And in this the American pulpit differs 
from the pulpits of other countries. There is no com- 
parison whatever between the English pulpit^ for in- 
stance, and the American pulpit any more than there is 
any similarity in the commercial methods and achieve- 
ments of the two countries. The pulpit of America 
has partaken of the broad sweep and liberty that is 
characteristic of our national ideals. It is not cir- 
cumscribed except by Deity on one side and humanity 
on the other. Between these points it moves as freely 
as it chooses or dares, and even heresy trials are go- 
ing out of fashion. 

The first point of difference is in the theology of 
the American pulpit, if its body of doctrine can be 
called a theology rather than a theologica-sociology. 
There were no sterner doctrinaires than those who 
came to these shores in the "Mayflower" or in other 
ships bearing the seed of the new country. They 
brought with them theological positions essentially 
Calvinistic. Theirs was a stern warfare against evil 



THE UNITED STATES 203 

and their notion of Deity was that of an unbending 
august ruler and disposer of events. Literalism, twin- 
sister of superstition, was the order of study, preach- 
ing profession, and action. The sudden darkening 
of the day sent the people to their churches or their 
prayer closets. The sudden appearance of a band 
of Indians made the elders search for an Achan in 
the camp. A series of misfortunes could be attrib- 
uted to nothing else than a witch. Whatever men 
suffered here was said to be nothing compared to 
the punishment stored up against the one who frac- 
tured holy laws in the smallest jot or tittle. It was 
only under conditions such as this that Jonathan Ed- 
wards could launch his terrible sermon concerning 
pun.shment, and cause strong men to grovel on the 
ground m a very passion of fear and terror. It was 
only under such conditions as this that ministers of 
religion could preside at the burning of a " witch " 
But as the conditions of life softened, so did the 
hearts of the people soften, and their Deity, who be- 
fore had been regarded as stern as themselves, began 
to be spoken of as infinite love. From this change 
came gentle men like Channing and Emerson to the 
pulpit, teaching the beautiful side of Deity. Of 
course, their positions were assailed in their day but 
the mfluence of Whittier, Lowell, Parker, and oihers 
soon began to permeate the lesser pulpits of the land 
until It can be said to-day that Emerson preaches in 
part from almost every religious platform in the 
country. 



204 THE UNITED STATES 

The evolution of the American pulpit, here re- 
ferred to in the briefest outline, is one of the points 
of difference — that a pulpit should have an evolu- 
tion at all — between it and the pulpit of other lands. 

But yet another change was in store, and in this 
the American pulpit showed most superbly its practi- 
cality and adaptability. In Germany scholars were 
working on what has wrongly been called the higher 
criticism. German pulpits became little more than 
seminary lecture rooms. Results of practical value 
were obtained, doubtless, but the German theolo- 
gians did not look beyond the result to its possible 
use in behalf of needy men. In time, inklings of the 
work of German scholars came filtering into the stud- 
ies where the American pulpit did its preparatory 
work. Then ensued a notable illustration of that 
saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous 
thing. With half an idea, half of the American pul- 
pit became iconoclastic. It seemed to their clientele 
that the very foundations of faith were tottering. 
Polemic war raged between pulpit and pulpit. Minor 
things were raised to the dignity of essentials. To 
the world at large it looked as if this condition would 
result in a rending to pieces by itself of the pulpit, 
and the religious world looked on aghast at what it 
called the apostasy of its recognized leaders. Preacher 
after preacher seemed to be imbued with the desire 
for notoriety by making a fresh denial and attracting 
contention and publicity. It was a period of much 
discussion and not enough study. 



THE UNITED STATES 205 

Then it became known that no criticism is valu- 
able unless it be constructive^ and it seems now that 
the pulpit is going back to its positive work of up- 
building. With it, it is carrying all of good it gained 
from German scholars, and is applying that good sys- 
tematically to the upbuilding of its people. In fact, 
the pulpit is back where it was in the beginning but 
with a larger outlook and a greater amount of humil- 
ity regarding the eternal things which it must see 
through a glass darkly. 

The American pulpit found that there is no the- 
ology without a sociology. That is the discovery it 
made during its period of unrest. In this respect the 
American pulpit differs most widely from others. It 
was Henry Drummond who first used the term "spiri- 
tual diagnosis." It was Moody, the evangelist of the 
reaction, who made the inquiry room a sort of a spiri- 
tual consulting room. And now the greater of the 
eastern theological seminaries is instituting what it 
calls a ''spiritual laboratory" in the form of a social 
settlement. The work of the pulpit is thus being 
humanized and taken as one with nature. There is 
more sociological wcfrk being done by the American 
pulpit than any pulpit in the world. Indeed, the day 
has come when an organized assembly of Christians 
employ not one, but two, three, even four pastors- 
one whose talent is to preach ; another whose talent is 
pastoral ; another who can direct the social life of the 
church in such a way as to make it a valuable adjunct 
to the pulpit. The institutional church is the result 



206 THE UNITED STATES 

of the pulpit's belief that man has more than one 
side to his nature. Reading-rooms^ baths, gymnasia, 
clubs, courses of study, etc.^ are frequently to be met 
with in the most useful churches, the theory being 
really the long-hidden one of the Apostle Paul, that 
man has mind, soul, and body; and again, that not 
that is first which is spiritual^ but that which is natu- 
ral, and after, that which is spiritual. The method is 
that one must be a good animal — a good being phys- 
ically — before one can adequately appreciate one's 
spiritual opportunities. Thus theology has come to 
recognize the laws of life, and sociology to teach their 
practice. Combined, they make the greatest uplifting 
force the world has ever known. It was the Ameri- 
can pulpit which took this step, and instead of falter- 
ing before the cry that the pulpit is useless, the 
pulpit has answered merely by entering a field of un- 
limited usefulness. In line with this, and led largely at 
the outset by the Roman Catholic Churchy the Ameri- 
can pulpit is making itself a power in the enforce- 
ment of ideals and laws which will prevent the disin- 
tegration of society. It thunders against divorce; it 
attacks child slavery; it rejects blood-money because 
it knows the donors mean it to be hush-money; it 
points out political corruption; it preaches the gospel 
of commercial honesty^ the gospel of political decency, 
the gospel of a chance for the poor. In other words, 
it takes the old gospel that used to be but used for 
spiritual food and applies it directly as a balm to the 
social wounds of the world. The most noteworthy 



THE UNITED STATES 207 

achievement of the American pulpit, then, is the suc- 
cess it has had in helping men to identify religion 
with life. 

The American pulpit, however, has not confined 
itself to sermons and churches ; it has entered the 
broad field of literature, and has given that tone that 
distinguishes the best American workmanship in let- 
ters. The fact is, that our literature dates from a 
certain old manse in Concord. When the lyceum was 
such a force in the country, it was manned mostly by 
ministers who found a pulpit in every city and ham- 
let throughout the land from which to preach to the 
people on subjects close to the nation's heart. And 
if one looks over the names of the men who have 
done worthy work to-day, one will find the names of 
many men who stand in the American pulpit. In 
fiction as well as in philosophy the American pulpit 
has been found to contain efficient workmen. It is 
true that to-day the pulpit has not that lordly author- 
ity it had a century ago, and this is well for the pul- 
pit. In a day when a minister's word is taken with- 
out question of it being the wisest word, there is a 
tendency to speak words without questioning whether 
they be even partially wise. The man in the pulpit 
can no longer hide behind his office. No longer can 
he speak his word and retire within the mystery of 
his calling. This is a day in which all things are 
tested, and the true word is held whether it be spoken 
by a layman or a clergyman. Thus it comes that the 
clergyman of to-day is, generally, a bigger man men- 



208 THE UNITED STATES 

tally than his forerunners, although one is tempted 
sometimes to think the contrary when one reviews the 
ponderous tomes written by spiritual leaders of the 
last two centuries. It is by the very worth of the 
thing said that the pulpit survives and keeps its place 
as leader. If it can announce the irrevocable laws of 
life ; if it can show beyond doubt the unbreakable con- 
nection between moral sowing and moral reaping; if 
it can show in living words the futility of risking 
one's character for gain — and the possibility of losing 
both ; if it can without a doubt prepare a man's mind 
to see clearly that though wicked men seem to flourish 
for the time, there is yet a greater and more substan- 
tial enjoyment for those who keep their honor un- 
sullied, then the pulpit shall have rendered a service 
to the country that is not eclipsed by any of the coun- 
try's servants, military, judicial, or commercial. And 
to the credit of the American pulpit let it be said that 
it is doing just these things. 

The peril of the pulpit lies in the pew, it is agreed. 
For some years past there has been serious discus- 
sion as to where the American pulpit of the next 
generation can be recruited. There is an alarming 
falling off in the number of aspirants for the min- 
istry of some branches of the church. This is caused 
by two conditions : one, the difficulty with which the 
public has come to realize the changed attitude of the 
pulpit toward its real work, and the other is the lack 
of financial rewards in the ministry when compared 
with the rewards of other professions. Those with 



THE UNITED STATES 209 

the best interests of the American ministry at heart 
will do well to be glad that these two conditions ex- 
ist; they augur well for the ministry of the future. 
Those who are deterred from entering the ministry 
because of the financial compensation being small may 
well be out of the pulpit. Those who have not yet 
the larger conception of the ministry as revealed in 
its larger work, may well stay out, too. The hope 
is that no one will enter the ministry as a ''profes- 
sion" in which one is paid for his service. The hope 
is that the ministry of the future will be recruited only 
from those who enter the pulpit because necessity is 
laid on them— even though the number of ministers 
of all churches be reduced one-half or more. The 
key-note of the ministry is consecration, not compen- 
sation. The field of the future in the ministry is as 
noble a field as a noble man can contemplate, and the 
power that adjusts all things can be trusted to sup- 
ply men who lead and do not follow in spiritual 
things. 

When we have true perspective of our history, it 
will be found that along with American diplomacy, 
American military and naval skill, American admin- 
istration, American industry, there stands an equal 
force — the American pulpit.^ 

THE END 



AUTHORSHIP OF CHAPTERS 

a, h, c, in, and o, Ethlyn T. Clough. 

d and /, Hon. James Bryce. 

e, Edwin Earle Sparks, Ph. D. 

g, Appleton's Magazine. 

h, Frederick Austin Ogg, in The World's Work. 

i, Thomas R. Shipp, in The Reader Magazine. 

j, Various authors in The World To-day and The 

World's Work, 
k, John Gilmer Speed, in The Outlook. 
I, Allan L. Benson, in Appleton's Magazine, 
n, Annals of the American Academy of Political 

and Social Science, 
p, William J. Cameron. 



^^B 9 1908 



/ 



